tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28825689056267322622018-08-24T12:35:49.525-07:00PlayerNC.S.noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-89924949602958548182018-08-24T12:02:00.000-07:002018-08-24T12:35:49.462-07:00Fish Food"Look at him," he groused.&nbsp; "Fucking Fish." <br /><br />I followed Tony's finger and there he was striding out the other the exit, Morty the accountant.&nbsp; His wallet fatter at least for the moment.&nbsp; He lit up a thick cigar self-satisfied in the crisp autum air then leaned on the railing.<br /><br />"At least, he's not leaving..." I said.&nbsp; Happy to that fact.<br /><br />Tony mumbled, "Fucking fish, fucking fish!&nbsp; That fucking guy."&nbsp; He pushed out a thick cloud of cigarette smoke into a crowd of mostly women walking into the casino.&nbsp; He got what he wanted: angry glares and a collective admonishment. <br /><br />He half lurched at them then defiantly mouthed "What?&nbsp; What?&nbsp; What?"<br /><br />The ladies drew in closer as they neared the door.<br /><br />"Asshole," one said to another.<br /><br />"I heard that.&nbsp; I heard that!"&nbsp; he screamed.<br /><br />"Tony..."&nbsp; I whispered and patted his shoulder.&nbsp; He spun quickly cocking a fist.<br /><br />I raised my eyebrows and he lowered it, shaking his head.&nbsp; He said "Don't man," and removed my steadying hand.&nbsp; "Man.&nbsp; Man.&nbsp; Just don't."<br /><br />"Can't let them get to you,"&nbsp; I said trying to steer the conversation back.<br /><br />"The fucking Junior League that just walked in?"<br /><br />"No," I said, " The fish.&nbsp; That fish." <br /><br />The thick aroma of Morty's cigar wafted over.&nbsp; I didn't have the nose for it then, but had I, I would have known it smelled as cheap as his suits looked.&nbsp; Didn't matter Morty the accountant, Morty the Fish, relished it like it was a hand rolled Cuban cigar.<br /><br />"I don't know how he does it man," Tony shaked his head again.&nbsp; I could see sweat beading up between the thinning hair of Tony's pate.&nbsp; "He just fucking calls and gets there."<br /><br />"You want that ca.."<br /><br />"Don't!"&nbsp; He stopped me with an angry wave of his hand.&nbsp; "Don't fucking give me 'I want that call' speech.&nbsp; Not when it's fucking 3,000 and rent is due.&nbsp; I don't want that fucking call.&nbsp; Don't give me the results oriented spiel.&nbsp; The result is the only thing that matters today."<br /><br />"Fine..."&nbsp; I went through the catalog of encouragements and they all rang hollow.&nbsp; I stood there and nodded.&nbsp; Time to just listen.&nbsp; I knew what Tony was up against and to get the much farther into the hole when he should have been well on his way digging out it made me literally hurt on the inside for him.&nbsp; I thought I about suspending my rule about loaning players money and then I quickly remembered all the times that went south even for guys like Tony.&nbsp; Even for guys that couldn't be beat one week.&nbsp; A year straight the most feared player in the casino.&nbsp; The guy always walking racks back to the cage. <br /><br />He sucked at his cigarette.&nbsp; At least he was taking a break.&nbsp; Many guys can't leave the table after absorbing a hit like that but Tony could.&nbsp; It was like the hits bounced off of him like bullets to Superman.&nbsp; Well, normally they did.<br /><br />The last two weeks everything had been going normal.&nbsp; Then a Sunday night, he sat in the only game running a PLO game and ran really bad.&nbsp; I didn't see it for myself, but I heard he couldn't get a hand to hold.&nbsp; He kept rebuying.&nbsp; Then he jumped back into his regular No Limit Hold'Em game a day later but it was like a fuse was tied to his bankroll.&nbsp; It barreled forward burning up buy-ins left and right. <br /><br />Some of the time I saw him first hand not be able to win a hand.&nbsp; Usually ahead but never ever holding.&nbsp; The dealers winced as they put down the beats and Tony grew ever more irritable.<br /><br />I had head 17k down by Wednesday.&nbsp; Thursday he was seen in the pits.&nbsp; Not Tony, I said.&nbsp; Yeah, Tony they told me.&nbsp; Rumors were he blasted off 50k in the week.&nbsp; I couldn't tell if the number was an exaggeration or an underestimation.&nbsp; Everybody had seen him losing.<br /><br />That morningas I rolled in for my shift as I referred to it, I saw him at the loan table.&nbsp; Bleery eyed and a vacant stare I could read his face.&nbsp; The 50k was probably well under the actual amount.&nbsp; "How deep?"&nbsp; I asked.&nbsp; He got up from the game and we took a walk<br /><br />"We--I'm at the bottom of my roll," he said as he steered me to Starbucks on the other side of the casino.<br /><br />"Take a break," I said.<br /><br />"This game, they are giving it away," he shook his head.&nbsp; A break wasn't happening.<br /><br />"Yeah... how much they give to you?"&nbsp; I asked.<br /><br />He leveled a glare at me and didn't refuse the cup of coffee I ordered him.<br /><br />"No, these fucking fish can't fold," he told me. "Jump in.&nbsp; The action is great."<br /><br />We finished our coffee and he shared some of the bad beats he had slogged through with a little bit of gallows humor.&nbsp; When we got back a seat was open.<br /><br />Sure enough, Tony wasn't lying.&nbsp; Morty the fish and five other randoms that didn't have a fold button formed a wall down one side of the table.&nbsp; A veritable buffet that would reward patience and discipline.&nbsp; The kind of game you dream about.<br /><br />An hour into it, while watching Tony making moves he didn't need to make and treading water, I got three streets of value against a Shriner in for a convention who flopped a flush draw made a pair on the turn, and didn't believe I had been betting my overpair (Kings) since my three bet to start the hand.&nbsp; Tony nodded and to his credit even mired in what had to be the worst run bad of his career seemed happy for me to win.&nbsp; Even though he knew he wasn't getting those chips from me, and the Shriner was about to call it a morning, he still smiled at my success.<br /><br />Then Morty the fish with a pile of ill-gotten chips vomited a stack of black $100 chips when his bottom two pair got counterfeited on the river and he couldn't let it go. The nit who had Queens might as well have put that 2k in a vault.<br /><br />I raised an eyebrow at Tony's direction.&nbsp; He was buried in his phone.&nbsp; Thumbing through twitter as though somehow an answer was forthcoming.<br /><br />"Tony," I whispered as Morty loudy explained his (lack of) thought process.&nbsp; "It turns around today."<br /><br />Tony turned to eye Morty's black and green chips, "Yeah, you right."<br /><br />Tony then dug into his pockets and tossed three $500 chips onto the table.&nbsp; I could tell that's all his pockets held. &nbsp; He had 3k in front of him.<br /><br />Even with the loss Morty had $3500 left. <br /><br />The next hand, Tony opened to $40 from under the gun.&nbsp; I spied two red 9s.&nbsp; I quickly ruled out three betting and opted to just call.&nbsp; I wasn't trying to isolate Tony.&nbsp; I wanted one, two or three of the fish behind me to call.&nbsp; Why not set mine with 9s. <br /><br />The waterfall started with my call and chips tumbled into the felt behind me.&nbsp; Morty in the big blind shrugged and called, too.<br /><br />6 players meant about $240 in the pot.<br /><br />The dealer burned and flipped the flop with a Jack of clubs leading the way in, followed by an Ace of hearts, and a four of diamonds.&nbsp; Morty sighed and checked. <br /><br />Tony seemed engaged and checked behind.&nbsp; I knew I was checking 9s but wondered why Tony wasn't betting.&nbsp; He should be leading here with his AceX combos.&nbsp; No real draws on this board.&nbsp; Yet, I knew Tony he definitely had something.<br /><br />...<br /><br />Wow, he must be really strong.&nbsp; Pocket Aces or pocket Jacks.&nbsp; He's flopped top or second set.&nbsp; Anything else he'd be trying to trim the field and not let a Broadway draw get there.&nbsp; He probably should have bet anyway.&nbsp; These passive fish might not...<br /><br />The lady from Baltimore, who laughed nervously whenever talking, led out for $120.<br /><br />What do I know, I thought.&nbsp; Tony inched ever so slightly closer to the table.<br /><br />She has an Ace.&nbsp; Tony must have second set a set of Jacks and is hoping an Ace would bet.&nbsp; Okay.&nbsp; Let's go.<br /><br />After two folds, the burly plumber from Houston called and shifted in his seated.&nbsp; Then Morty sighed again.&nbsp; Strong or weak?&nbsp; I asked myself.&nbsp; Weak.&nbsp; That's authentic not any of the bad acting Morty employed when flopping the nuts.&nbsp; He's calling with a very weak holding but he likes the ever building pot.<br /><br />The pot was $600 and now back to Tony.<br /><br />"Plus $400," he said quietly to the dealer as he threw out 5 black chips and four red $5 chips in an assertive confident fashion.&nbsp; Definitely... pocket Jacks.<br /><br />I almost forgot I was still in the hand and after a pause remembered to muck my meaningless 9s.<br /><br />The lady bit at her lip and played with her bigger chips.&nbsp; Then laughingly said, "I call."&nbsp; There was the slightest bit of a question in there.&nbsp; She's strong but worried she's not strong enough.&nbsp; Ace Jack?&nbsp; I thought. <br /><br />The plumber looked at his remaining stack of 1000 and then mucked his hand, "Too much for that hand."&nbsp; He immediately had to confide to the man next to him what he let go.<br /><br />Morty shook his head and threw bad money into the pot.<br /><br />Well, Tony was on his way.&nbsp; He had gotten $1400 into the pot with a set of Jacks, at least that's how I saw it.<br /><br />The dealer fired a turn card.&nbsp; 5 of spades.&nbsp; Total brick.<br /><br />Morty quickly checked and Tony quietly said "All in" and I could tell he was praying one or both of the call stations would get it in with him.&nbsp; It was an overbet but both players were the type to pay him off.<br /><br />All eyes went to the lady who pursed her lips and stroked her neck.&nbsp; Definitely thinking about folding, I thought.&nbsp; Then she looked at her cards.&nbsp; "Maybe, I should fold this," she said, "but hey," another laugh, "My daddy always told me you can't win a giant pot by folding."&nbsp; Her remaining stack of $1200 went into the pot.&nbsp; Tony closed his eyes for a second<br /><br />Morty pushed at the thick glasses that had slid down his thin nose and sneered at the board.&nbsp; The glasses slid down again.&nbsp; "I know I'm not good here."<br /><br />"You are not," Tony snapped to my surprise.&nbsp; Was he trying to goad a call?&nbsp; No, it looked like he wanted Morty to get out of the way.&nbsp; He was running bad.&nbsp; Chasing away a customer. <br /><br />"I'm not," Morty nodded.&nbsp; "But this pot is what..."<br /><br />"It's just under 4k right now,"<br /><br />"4K?"&nbsp; Morty nodded.&nbsp; "I've never won a 4k pot.&nbsp; Ah, fuck it I call."<br /><br />The lady said, "I got Aces and Jacks two pair," and laid her cards down for all to see.<br /><br />She looked at Tony, he didn't show his hand but told her, "You are behind.&nbsp; You need an Ace."<br /><br />Morty pushed at his glasses and watched the dealer burn and turn the river.&nbsp; 2 diamonds hit the felt.<br /><br />Tony flipped over his pocket Jacks and all eyes turned to Morty, as the lady said, "Oh Jeezh," and started to collect her stuff to leave.<br /><br />Morty nodded, rocking back and forth.&nbsp; "Tony, you remember when you called me terrible," he said with a sneer.<br /><br />"What's with the speech?"&nbsp; Tony responded.&nbsp; "Just muck your hand or turn it over if you can beat me."<br /><br />Morty kept rocking and glared at Tony, "I think you called me what a call station? Right?&nbsp; A terrible call station"<br /><br />"Show you hand, sir," the pretty Asian dealer demanded.<br /><br />Morty ignored her, "You said I'd be broke in a month playing the way I do.&nbsp; You remember that?&nbsp; Just calling."<br /><br />"Yeah, I guess,"&nbsp; Tony said maybe starting to fear the worse.<br /><br />"I'm not broke yet," Morty said tilting his head.&nbsp; He rolled his tongue against his Chicklet like front teeth.<br /><br />"It hasn't been a month yet, Morty, give it time you'll get there," Tony dejectedly looked up to the heavens.&nbsp; He knew it was coming.&nbsp; I knew it was coming.<br /><br />"No, it hasn't but see if one of us is going to go broke this month..."<br /><br />Tony got up from his seat, and eyeballed the dealer, "Hold my spot,"&nbsp; She looked confused and glanced down at his set of Jacks.<br /><br />"...it's more likely going to be you,"&nbsp; Morty flipped over Ace Three off suit. "Straight Ace to the Five," he said smugly.&nbsp; "That's why you call!"<br /><br />The dealer pushed up the cards and looked sadly at Tony who was already walking off.<br /><br />"Yeah, get some more money,"&nbsp; Morty giggled.<br /><br />Tony stopped and spun around.&nbsp; "You think that's a good play?&nbsp; You think calling with Ace rag was a good play?&nbsp; When you were behind a set and top two?&nbsp; You needed runner runner.&nbsp; Perfect, perfect."<br /><br />"Hey, it worked,"&nbsp; Morty smiled and dragged the pot in. <br /><br /><br />Tony stopped pacing, "This is it bud. That $600 I just put on the table that's it.&nbsp; I'm dry after that."<br /><br />"You told me you had a hundred, a hundred and twenty k in your bankroll," I suspected it but I still struggled to believe it.&nbsp; "Tony broke?"<br /><br />"PLO...&nbsp; Black Jack.. Hold'Em.. it's been insane, it's like trying to hold water, I'm just bleeding out,"&nbsp; he just kept shaking his head: disconsolate. <br /><br />I ached.&nbsp; I steeled myself for the inevitable but it never came.&nbsp; No, I realized, today he won't be able to ask for it, but tomorrow or next week he would.&nbsp; He'll ask for that loan he's advised me 100 times over to not give out to others with that same desperation in their eyes. No, today he'll try to make something out of $600.&nbsp; He asked if I was ready to go back.&nbsp; I said no, I need some more air but the truth was I couldn't bare to watch the finale.&nbsp; If it happened today or not.<br /><br />I watched him walk back into the casino and I asked myself if I could ever spin out of control like that.&nbsp; The consummate professional down to $600.&nbsp; Then Morty walked up on me, reeking of his cigar.<br /><br />"Look at him," he sneered in Tony's direction.&nbsp; "Fucking fish."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-36717169625696452772012-03-08T00:33:00.002-08:002017-01-01T12:32:55.895-08:00BluffingThick cigarette breath assaulted me as the man in the tattered Red Sox jacket put his hand on my shoulder, "Hey boss, spare a dollar..." it hung there not as a question but an instruction. I couldn't sidestep it or the man.&nbsp; His gently tightening grip, neither affectionate nor comforting, but&nbsp;oddly somehow&nbsp;both soft and malevolent made the hairs on my neck stand up.&nbsp; The harsh cold wind pushed at me, up the darkened street gaining speed between the concrete buildings.&nbsp; It buttressed me helping the man stop me on that corner.&nbsp; <br /><br />I gave him a steely look, and he inhaled quickly through his nostrils, "Sorry guy."&nbsp; I tried to wave him off, but his hand didn't move.&nbsp; I had to look him in the eye.<br /><br />Quiet, gray blue eyes surprised me, they&nbsp;looked like they still had the sparkle of youth, maybe a forty years old&nbsp;but his weathered face told a different story. Craggy, fractured and leathery ridges told of many more years and hardship born of living outdoors.&nbsp; Then in a flash, those eyes lost their luster and bore into me.<br /><br />"Sorry guy?"&nbsp; He said, "I don't think so."&nbsp; His hand now found the tendon to my neck and his grip gathered force.&nbsp; There was no paradoxical soft evil holding me, it was throttled aggression.<br /><br />"Whoa," I tried to jump back.&nbsp;The situation devolving, "Easy brother.&nbsp; I don't have nothing."<br /><br />He seemed to summon height and brought his breath full bore on me.&nbsp; "I saw you just win that tournament in there.&nbsp; You can spare a dollar."&nbsp; Again, not a question.<br /><br />He tilted his head back and forth and raised eyebrows.&nbsp; <br /><br />My wallet, fat with $100 bills pressed against, my leg, surely it stood out as obviously as it felt.&nbsp; I feared merely pulling it out would lose me all of what I had won.<br /><br />The grip gathered more force, "Spare a dollar, spare two."<br /><br />I could smell the sweetness of cheap rum on his breath too.&nbsp; In the shadows, I saw a figure behind him.<br /><br />Suddenly, the figure burst out of the concrete doorway, "Fuck this man."<br /><br />This new man had no subltety to him, he bull rushed past the first man. His pupils dilated like saucers, heavy saliva dripping from his lips,&nbsp;but even though I saw those features at the time I didn't process them.&nbsp; Only the gun had my full attention, a scratched beaten revolver, the barrel pointed at my temple.<br /><br />The man with the gun spoke, "Give me your fucking wallet or fucking die.&nbsp; Spare a dollar bullshit, spare the wallet motherfucker."<br /><br />I shrugged, "This is a mistake."<br /><br />"Ain't no mistake here, give the man..." the first man started.<br /><br />I slowly grabbed at his wrist, "Let me explain something to you fellas.&nbsp; I'm a littel bit irritated you stopped me here in the cold..."<br /><br />The man with the revolver looked quizzical getting ready to do something even dumber...<br /><br />"Now, I did win a poker tournament, and that was fun, but I'm a police offer.&nbsp; So before you go and make an even dumber mistake then this collosal fuck up of an armed robbery you are attempting why don't I spare, why don't I spare you guys by walking this way.&nbsp; You walk that way and we'll pretend it never happened.&nbsp; Course I see either one of you on this corner again, there's going to be problems."<br /><br />"You a cop?"<br /><br />"This offer has a very small window.&nbsp; The colder I get the quicker it closes.&nbsp; So take your fucking hands off me, but that gun away, now, and walk the other fucking way."<br /><br />My eyes went back and forth between the two.<br /><br />"Yeah... okay.&nbsp; That's a deal."&nbsp; The gun lowered and&nbsp;the two looked at each other with fear, and turned around and walked the other way.&nbsp; I walked to the corner turned, took two steps into the darkness with the same confident pace and then ran.&nbsp;<br /><br />Bluffing isn't fun.C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-81556628746574458622010-09-18T14:27:00.000-07:002010-09-20T12:04:20.707-07:00Lady Luck - short poker story: part two of twoContinued... from previous post.<br /><br />I had never seen her before, I kind of stared, she smiled even broader, and said, "All those chips..." All I could manage was “Oh.” She giggled and turned away walking out of the room. I quickly looked over the tough guys at the table to see if she was attached and if my luck just ran out. The only other guy beating the game like me was Jimmy Zees, who locked eyes and shook his head. I froze for a second. He smiled, "When you're hot... I guess you're hot, kid. That's our new waitress Dalia."<br /><br />I played for as long as I could to make it seem like I wasn't hitting and running even though this <a title="Play Texas Hold‘em poker online at bwin.com!" href="https://poker.bwin.com/poker.aspx?content=texasholdem">Texas Hold em poker</a> game was as soft as they come. I even gave some pots back to those losers when I had the best hand and just mucked. It was for my own security, to get invited back to games I had been crushing I took to giving a little back. I had to let them think they had a chance, but all I could think about was Dalia as I played on auto-pilot. Her legs walked through my mind a hundred times during that game, and that smile lit me up like a Christmas tree at midnight. Finally after one more small lost pot, I said this is starting to feel like <a title="Play online poker at bwin.com!" href="https://www.bwin.com/play-online-poker">online poker</a> as though I wasn't mucking the winner and I had just got bad beated. That was my cue to leave. They still noticed I was leaving a winner.<br /><br />I put them behind me, as I walked out front. The bar was just about settling down, with only a couple of friends of the establishment still nursing their last drinks when I stepped out of the game. The neon sign from outside glowed over Dalia with a brillant red aura when I saw her again. She was leaning over a table scrubbing nothing. I felt like I had taken a boot to the gut as I drank her in. I swallowed hard like a bluffer with his last dollar in the pot and worked up the nerve to walk up to... Dalia, that name danced through my brain.<br /><br />She looked up and smiled, that wide inviting grin, that at once made feel at ease and at the same time gave me a cold sweat like I was flu-ridden. I blinked a few too many times, again like a guy trying to steal a pot with nothing, and returned the smile.<br /><br />She said she had an extra beer and she was sure that Jimmy would let her share one with me before she closed up. I couldn't refuse, no way I was going to refuse, man was I running hot. She talked, I acted like I listened, actually, I did care what she said. Jimmy had already told her I was good folks not like the rest of the guys back there. Jimmy liked her, looked out for her, because she reminded him of his daughter he had told her. That made her laugh. Usually that was a bad line but with Jimmy it was true.<br /><br />He had also told her I wasn’t the kind of guy to go missing for a week, or for a year, or forever. I was the kind of guy he'd want his daughter to talk to. While we sat, I don't remember what I said, but I do remember her laughing at my jokes, her hand dancing on the table top, and her slender fingers lightly brushing mine, first as if by chance and then with a light purpose. I remember her eyes opening wide, her pupils dilated, and a sweetness that drew me into her. <br /><br />I couldn't even think about why she'd fall for a guy like me, I didn't consider her running an angle, or her running somebody else's angle. Instead I just soaked in the moment, every hair on my body prickling up, like I was watching an opera singer hold a note I couldn't dream of. I felt my heart started to beat at a weird pitch and I felt something I hadn't felt in years, not since I met my ex-us that first time, and then the cold sweat hit again. I knew what it was. It was love pure as the driven snow.<br /><br />Then I could see in her eyes somehow she felt it too, a genuine love for a scamp like me, and every sensation doubled. I was drunk for her.<br /><br />And then in my haze, a line from Sinatra that my daddy used to sing when I was a kid played through my head, "Luck be a lady, luck be a lady tonight." As we sat, I saw him singing it, smiling at me, and nodding his head at one of his vixens.<br /><br />I shook my head and laughed half to myself half out loud.<br /><br />"What's so funny?" Dalia asked.<br /><br />"Lady Luck," I shook my head again.<br /><br />Then I stood up, took one last long look at her, seering her face into my memory forever, doffed my cap at her, "I gotta go darling."<br /><br />She said, "See you next week." Half as a statement, half as a question.<br /><br />I half-turned only seeing those legs that made me chest thump, and lied, "I'll be seeing you," and walked out that bar, and I never looked back.<br /><br />Dalia, was a once in a lifetime thing, a once in a lifetime lady, but unlike my daddy I knew and understood, lady luck or any of her sisters was the unluckiest thing that could happen to a gambler like us.<br /><br />P.S. I'm still killing every game I sit in, I was probably the guy holding the stone cold nuts against you last night.C.S.noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-91104335940264424942010-09-15T13:40:00.000-07:002010-09-20T12:07:45.004-07:00Lady Luck--short poker story part one of twoI was ginning. I was on a rush like Darvin Moon at the World Series. Everything was hitting. You know players that say they haven't hit a set in months. I hadn't missed at least two sets in a session in over a year. They always held. The only sets over sets were the ones I was holding top set. I could see flops before they hit. I wasn't soul reading people I was telling the souls what they were going to be.<br /><br />It was insane, it didn't matter if I was playing <a title="Play Texas Hold‘em poker online at bwin.com!" href="https://poker.bwin.com/poker.aspx?content=texasholdem">Texas Hold'em poker</a> live or online I was simply crushing it. I didn't even know how to play Omaha and I always seemed to get there whenever I'd be forced to play. Double suited and I'd usually hit the flush on an unpaired board.<br /><br />Play hi-low, hello wheels with every suit on the board. What a fun time. I thought to myself I'm the king of the poker world. I moved up from 3 -6 limit, to 2 - 5 No limit hold'em to 100 - 200 in about the lifetime of a fruit fly. I was winning <a title="Play online poker tournaments at bwin.com" href="https://poker.bwin.com/poker.aspx?view=tournaments">online poker tournaments</a> like I was a superuser. Yet, even as I would sit down to print money my real life was in a tale spin.<br /><br />You know that saying lucky in love unlucky in cards? I was the opposite, I couldn't miss when I played a card game so I played all the time. Next thing I know the missus became an ex-us and took my new lexus that I missed even more then her. Still who needs women when you are winning. Or for that matter anything else. For the first time in my life, I couldn't lose.<br /><br />I spent freely out of my bankroll because why not. I felt like I was on the opposite of a twilight zone episode, some cheery dream that would never end, but deep in my core I feared the moment it would come crashing down. As my broke daddy used to tell me with every new step mommy I'd meet, "Enjoy it while you got it son... you'll understand one day." I knew there was always a sad ending to any Midas touch story but I didn't see mine coming, or know it would hit me like a freight train.<br /><br />One night, I was playing late in the local den of thieves, behind the bar of Jimmy Zees a connected man with some of the deepest, loosest pockets in the city. I'm killing the game as I always do. I was in auto-pilot with my bluffs not being called and second nuts forced to stack off to me when I held the best of it.<br /><br />Then lady luck walked through the door. I was in a giant pot with two low lifes from the port, one who smuggled dirty things into the city, and another one who was the captain of the police there but could more accurately be described as number one’s employee. We were playing stud, I had hit a 10 high straight, it looked like the captain had a straight of his own to the 6 or so, and the smuggler easily had two pair but I knew he wasn’t sitting on a boat. Not the way I was running. I put the rest of my chips in the middle. I felt a person walk up behind me and the hairs on my neck stood up in excitement. The partners in crime both pushed their chips to the center, I turned over the winner and they both mucked in disgust.<br /><br />As I dragged the pot, I laid eyes on what was waiting behind me and surveyed this tall of drink of water with lips you could use as life preservers. "Who was that?!?" I thought as I haphazardly drew the chips in. She noticed my attention and sauntered over to me, in the shortest, sheerest mini-skirt a woman could put on without getting arrested. She softly touched my nose with her forefinger, "Must be your lucky day," she smiled, her teeth perfect, gleaming white, and lips luminescent even in the darkness.<br /><br />To be continued.C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-42052822788630866632010-05-23T12:15:00.000-07:002010-10-05T09:29:17.820-07:00Silverback Issue Two Gulf Coast Poker Magazine part threeMy palms got sweaty and my shoulders got tighter with the anticipation of having to make a decision. It only took a half an hour for me to be on the spot. While they were dealing Texas Hold ‘Em Two Times bet the flop and then the turn as he always did, he shook the other two players out the hand, and only Silverback went with him to the river. This was the standard <a href="http://www.bwin.com/en/casino-poker-games.html" title="Play casino poker games on bwin.com">poker game</A> for those two. Yet, it didn't feel standard at all to me.<br /><br />Action on Two Times and he stared at Silverback’s cards and right through them, I knew he was waiting. Silverback had nothing, complete garbage, and was waiting to make a move if Two Times checked. I was frozen stiff I didn’t know who scared me more. Suddenly I was playing a game of<a href="http://www.holdempoker.com" title="Visit holdempoker.com and learn how to play Texas Holdem">Texas Holdem</A> in my mind.<br /><br />Two Times eyes narrowed and then he scratched his nose and practically stared at me. Begrudingly, because I had to, I sent him a signal and as I did Silverback looked back at me, the look he gave me was chilling. It was a look I’d seen him do at the table. I felt like I was one of his opponents and he was staring into me reading my cards as though my eyes were a mirror. <br /><br />Two Times checked and Silverback, holding his cards even more obviously, so everybody could see I could see what he held, bet. Two Times quickly folded. <br />Silverback slammed his cane into the table as though he was pissed he didn’t get a call, “I need a break. Kid, come with me.” I followed him to his office.<br /><br />“Sit down!” he bellowed. <br /><br />Did he know I had signaled, how could he?<br /><br />“You think I’m stupid kid?” he put the bottom of his cane to my throat.<br /><br />“No… No, sir,” I stammered.<br /><br />“Good.” He pulled the cane away. “You did a good thing tonight. Him offering you money and bringing that thug in there to intimidate you, that took some balls to do what you did.”<br /><br />Before I could question he lifted his cane above my head where a row of televisions lined the wall above the doorframe. <br /><br />“I got cameras for two blocks, ain’t nobody rolling up on here to steal from our game that gets away with it. You made the right decision scratching your nose. I hate cheaters. Hate ‘em. You know had you told him I had a decent hand you wouldn’t be sitting in my office right now. You’d be headed to a swamp. Not fun to sleep in a swamp you know," he let that settle in.<br /><br />Then he continued conspiratorially, “What you are going to do now, is start signaling the truth. See, there a few golden rules in poker, like you can give a man a haircut every couple of weeks or so but you can only scalp him once. Ole Texas Dolly likes to say shear a sheep or skin it, same thing. I prefer scalping, rolls off the tongue. Another rule is you can ride a donkey every day but one day you ride that donkey too hard that donkey’s going to kick back. Well, I guess I rode him too hard. I forgot that you got to give him a carrot every now and then. Donkey’s got to eat too. <br /><br />“Well, tonight, the donkey gets his treat. In fact, he’ll get his carrot for three more weeks, and then he’ll play the biggest pot he's ever played, and then that cheater is going to get his. That donkey’s going to get put down. You follow?”<br /><br />“You want me to tip him off to your cards?”<br /><br />“That’s right, and then one night you are going lie just like you did tonight. You'll signal I’m bluffing with nothing when I have him.”<br /><br />“What about…” again I was in a corner.<br /><br />“What about nothing. I’ll show him the tape, tell him if he ever cheats again, I’ll show everybody another tape. Man’s a politician. A married politician who shouldn’t be running around with waitresses from bars like mine and he certainly shouldn’t be trying to push my employees around. Two timing son of bitch”C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-52743092102047458352010-05-16T12:01:00.000-07:002010-05-16T12:15:34.268-07:00Silverback Issue Two Gulf Coast Poker Magazine part twoHe looked around the street then got out of his car pretty certain we were alone.<br />“Silverback shows you his cards doesn’t he?” He smiled the smile most men give to their mother-in-laws when the meal they’ve just eaten was barely edible. I remember thinking how does this guy keep getting elected? To me he was as transparent as they come. He was the type of guy if he saw your hole cards he wouldn't say and thing and just rob you blind. The type that would be a super-user on those <a href="https://poker.bwin.com/" title="Play online poker at bwin.com!">online poker</A><br />sites.<br /><br />“No…not really.”<br /><br />“Not really, so he doesn’t show them… but you see them?” The smile some how got bigger, “Huh, kid?”<br /><br />“Sometimes… look, I’m not…”<br /><br />“Don’t worry kid, I’m your councilman after all, you can trust me.” He reached out what he meant to be a comforting hand on my shoulder. I had to stop myself from stepping back from it in revulsion. He whispered, “You know what he’s got on me?”<br /><br />“Got on you…”<br /><br />“How he always seems to win a hand off me. I can never beat the guy. Never! What’s he got on me kid.”<br /><br />“I don’t know,” I lied. “ I just read the cards on the table to him, I don’t follow what he’s doing.”<br /><br />“Don’t lie to me kid, I see you watching his hands! How much does Silverback pay you? Whatever it is quadruple it, and that’s what I’ll pay you. All you have to do is scratch your nose when he’s got a big hand and touch anywhere else on your face when he doesn’t.” <br /><br />“I’m sorry sir, but I can’t.” I started to turn and the comforting hand on my shoulder turned into a death grip.<br /><br />“I’m sorry but you can son.” As he said that two large men got out the backseat of his car, “This is officer Mallory and officer Simpson. They are my private security. They make sure that certain things go my way. Do I need them to make sure you scratch your nose when you are supposed to?”<br /><br />“No.”<br /><br />When I went in for my next shift, the bartender asked me what was eating me. I shrugged and got prepped for the evening session in a daze. The bartender saw me dragging my shoulders and said “Something’s bothering you kid, you don’t have to talk about it… but remember you’ll make that right decision, trust yourself you are a smart kid." <br /><br />He continued, "If it’s some girl don’t worry she won’t be the only one to make you feel that way you’ll get over her and the 100 that come after her, believe me, if it’s your parents better to listen to them now then wake up one day and wish they could talk to you when they are gone, and if it’s something about the game, don’t forget that last boy that worked it ended up on a… milk carton.”<br /><br />How could I forget, I thought to myself.<br /><br />That night Two Times showed up with a pep in his step. He smiled a little too broadly at Silverback and even acknowledged me with a nod and a lingering eye lock. Tracking behind him was his friend officer Mallory who was sitting in the game too.<br /><br />Him introduced himself as though we hadn't met and said "I normally like to play a good <a href="https://poker.bwin.com/poker.aspx?view=tournamenttypes&tt=sitandgo" title="Play online sit and go poker tournaments at bwin.com">Sit and go</A> but I'll try your game tonight." Silverback patted the man on the back in his welcoming way and then Mallory stuck out his huge paw toward me.<br /><br />He shook my hand more than sternly and I tried not to wince as it felt like every little bone was about to break.<br /><br />The night started out strange, on some nights I could see most of Silverback’s hands and on other nights he’d guard them even from me, but on that evening I saw every single hand. Two Times was all smiles despite losing some hands to the other players at the table.<br /><br />To be continued...C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-70473442312099216442010-05-09T03:22:00.000-07:002010-05-16T03:31:44.901-07:00Silverback Issue Two Gulf Coast Poker MagazineIn our last edition I found myself becoming an apprentice to the man they called Old Grey Bear or Silverback (a name favored by a couple of young criminals that played in the game). He was a crotchety 80 year old bar owner who wielded his cane more like a billy club than a crutch, and played poker in marathon sessions with the most upstanding men in the city as well as the most wanted. The <a href="https://www.bwin.com/texas-holdem-poker" title="Play Texas Hold‘em poker online at bwin.com!">Texas Hold'em Poker</A> games were legendary in the city.<br /><br />In his bar, it didn’t matter what your name was as long as you had the cash you could play. On that fateful day, I found myself being the old man’s eyes late at night when the smoke and the dim neon light from the beer signs made it hard for him to see because I had the guts to stand up to him and tell him what he thought he saw on the board wasn’t there. In some ways, that was my first mistake and in others that was my luckiest break.<br /><br />I had a limited knowledge of the game and though it took me a while to learn the rules of stud, <a href="https://poker.bwin.com/poker.aspx?content=omahahigh" title="Play Omaha poker online at bwin.com">Pot Limit Omaha</A>, and hold’em once I did, I saw that Silverback had this innate ability to bet when his opponents had nothing and get away from a hand when they had something. On his good nights, especially when he was running good, he’d dispense a piece of knowledge or a little kernel of truth about the game and I’d the application of it in the game. <br /><br />One of the local politicians would bluff at a pot twice but never three times because he believed if a man could call him twice he’d have to have him beat. The others guys at the table didn’t catch on but Silverback did. He called the man Ol Two Times to his face and the man never realized the name was related to his poker leak. I’d watch Silverback call the first two bets with any two cards. If Two Times would bet the river he’d only play the strongest possible holdings, if Two Times checked Silverback would bet any hand he held regardless of how bad it was and win the pot.<br /><br />Every once in a while Ol Two Times would fire a raise back at him, and sure enough Silverback would quickly move all his chips to the center of the table. It was fun to see him just own the man. No surprise that Two Times was the first player to approach me with an axe to grind with my devious boss. One early morning after my shift I walked out the bar and to the side street where my car was parked and his black Lexus crept up on me.<br /><br />When I noticed it, I jumped as I thought I was going to get jumped. After a moment, he rolled down his tinted window smiling like a game show host, “It’s alright boy, just me. Your councilman.” I almost called him Ol Two Times, but I caught myself, only Silverback had that privilege.<br /><br />“Tough break in there sir,” I nodded at him feeling sorry that the politician had lost a big pot when one of the more inexperienced players couldn’t get off a hand and caught a lucky river card to end his night.<br /><br />“Yes, that seems to happen a lot these days, say kid, you want to grab a cup of coffee or beer somewhere,” he arched an eyebrow.<br /><br />“I’m not… No, I’ve got to be headed home I’m expected… my mom…”<br /><br />“Well, you got a second kid?”<br /><br />“Okay..." This was starting to feel a bit menacing. I visualized the bad actors in a reactment of me marching off to my death. Still, running was a bit out of the question despite how much I the flight response was firing in my neurons.<br /><br />To be continued...C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-36752942822315935542010-03-27T11:09:00.000-07:002010-03-27T11:09:00.566-07:00Do You See What I See (Part 2) Gulf Coast Poker Magazine Issue 1“What do you see on that table, son?” The Grey Bear pointed to the five cards face up in the middle of green felt. “ I say that’s two clubs and a spade. They say that’s three clubs,” he hissed at me. “What do you see?”<br /><br />One of the gangsters looked at me menacingly.<br /><br />I hadn’t played much cards but I knew the suits at least or so I thought. Now, being asked this question I forgot everything. If somebody needed a <a href="https://poker.bwin.com/poker.aspx?view=pokerschool">poker school</a> it was me. I peered at the five cards on the table, and got my bearings. That’s a heart, yes what else could it be, I thought to myself. That’s an Ace of… diamonds, definitely, that’s a 5 of clubs, an 8 of clubs… clubs right, spades look like shovels, yeah, clubs look like clovers and that’s a 9 of… clubs.<br /><br />I turned to the old man about to answer and he put a giant paw on my shoulder and said, “Now, remember I said two clubs and a spade. “ He paused and seemed to grow taller and bigger with each passing moment. “They say three clubs. And, think real carefully about what you are about to say, son.” His breath was heavy with bourbon, his eyes bloodshot, but his voice didn’t waver and his grip was unflinching.<br />I looked again at the table, everybody looking at me, “It’s… three clubs.” I braced myself for a smack and told myself to roll with the punch if it came, I could probably make it to the door before he could get his cane on me, I plotted out how to elude the bouncer and thought I might just be able to make it out alive.<br /><br />The smack didn’t come.<br /><br />He paused, red with anger. He lifted his head and pounded the furthest card, the 9 of clubs with his cane. “Fine,” he grimaced. The table waited with me, and then the politician began to nervously laugh, the others followed suit. The old man turned even redder and then started laughing too. “It’s a good thing you mothertruckers aren’t cheating me in my own place. Kid, push this to that man over there.” He flung some hundreds to the table. He tucked another in my top pocket, “Now, get me a bourbon and branch, and get comfortable we’re playing some cards. You just became my eyes…”<br /><br />“Your-your eyes?”<br /><br />“Yah, so you better get that squeak out of your voice, so I don’t have to get somebody else to be my ears .”<br /><br />I was dazed. <br /><br />“Get moving!” he bellowed. <br /><br />I did as he asked and walked out toward the bartender for the Bourbon and Branch.<br />I told him what happened, “You did good kid,” he nodded.<br /><br />“But he lost the hand.”<br /><br />“Right, and you had the balls to tell him that. And truth is he didn’t care if he lost the hand, he probably knew that he lost the hand, he just wanted to make sure you were honest and more importantly not a coward.”<br /><br />I still wasn’t getting it.<br /><br />The bartender laughed at my ignorance and continued, “Now… he knows if you can stand up to him and you and can tell him the truth, he won’t have to worry about one of those thugs getting to you and one day you lying to him about a river card in the future. Course, he could have just told you about the last kid that did that.”<br /><br />“The last kid?”<br /><br />“Yeah, the last kid that told him what the cards were and was dumb enough to lie about a river card. You can only find him on a milk carton.” He let that sink in. “See why I told you not to go back there? Now get him his bourbon and branch before he gets any angrier.”C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-10520133874414041582010-03-26T11:06:00.000-07:002010-03-26T11:09:26.185-07:00Do You See What I See (Part 1) Gulf Coast Poker Magazine Issue 1Do You See What I See?<br /><br />The old man beckoned me into the back room with a hurried, flippant wave. I had been cleaning tables and bar-backing for a week and he barely did more than grunt at me when I had done something right, and he just fired me evil glares when I mis-stepped. I wasn’t worried about being fired when I spilled a tray of beer bottles I was more afraid for my life. I had seen the old man come out the smoky back room and splinter two wooden canes on the door frame and rattle off a string of expletives that would make a porn star cringe, but somehow I had escaped his wrath. Fortunately to that point I answered to the bartender and just avoided the man they called Old Grey Bear.<br /><br />I had seen the men that filtered in and out of that room throughout the night, they came when the bar was open and when the bar was closed, and they were the type that scared most people and I could tell he scared them. The Texas Hold 'em and <a href="http://www.omahapoker.com/">Omaha </a>poker game never seemed to stop it only ebbed and flowed, and it wasn’t unusual to see a guy walk in on my Tuesday shift and walk out when I returned for work on Thursday. The bartender told me the old man wasn’t so much a bar owner, as he was a guy who owned a bar so he could play poker and that’s all he did.<br /><br />But I only watched the comings and goings, from a distance, as the only piece of advice I was given by the bartender was not to EVER go in there and the knowing look he gave me when he said it was chilling.<br /><br />So, when the old man sternly stomped his cane and saw me pass by the half-closed door I froze in my tracks. He looked over his reading glasses and peered at me like a big cat in thin cover eyeing a limping member of the heard.<br /><br />It got worse, “Boy! In here. Now!” he bellowed.<br /><br />I swallowed hard, stole a glance back at the bartender, who shrugged helplessly, and I walked into the back room. The acrid cigarette and heavy cigar smoke hung like a fog over the room. It wasn’t so much poorly lit, as it was just the smoke captured the light in its thickness and made it feel like the last intact room of a house ablaze.<br /><br />The old man flipped his cane upward, grabbed its base, whipped it behind him and in one quick motion captured a wayward chair with its hook, and pulled it to him. He pounded on the chair with the shaft and glared at me, “Sit.”<br />I tried not to look at the other men, but all eyes were on me. A well known local politician nodded like I was holding a baby for him to kiss not like I was spotting him sitting with the other thugs at the table. They included several guys who looked like they had gotten their fortune from pharmaceuticals, but weren’t pharmacists, and they eyeballed me with disdain. I scanned a couple of other familiar faces, I couldn’t quite place, and before I could look any longer, the old man pounded the chair again, “I said SIT!”<br /><br />I did.<br /><br />I had never said a word to the owner, this old man, a combustible pitbull of rage, who could probably take most 20 year olds in a fight even though he was 80 something, and suddenly I was seated next to him in a game that featured stacks of hundred dollar bills, more money than had ever passed in and out of my pockets in my lifetime.C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-15504157287152137102010-03-02T11:13:00.000-08:002010-03-02T12:07:46.976-08:00What's Cracklin below (follow up to What's Cracklin')Jackson, from Jackson, studied each of our faces, we leaned in like kids on our first camping trip the wind picking up at just the right moment, whistling in Jackson's pregnant pause. Jackson, glanced a steely gaze at the corporal, "Kegs of beer.... a whole mess of monkey spiders." He started laughing busting our balls again.<br /><br />Tony, who preached patience in poker but most needed <a href="https://poker.bwin.com/poker.aspx?view=pokerschool">poker school</a> out of any of us to learn it, spoke "No there's not. It's full of experiments."<br /><br />The volume lowered to conspiratorial again and everybody edged toward Tony. Jackson was disbelieving, "Experiments?' pointing a knife my way, "You've been reading too many of his books..."<br /><br />"No, I did go into the hatch last week," Tony pulled out a key chain, "turns out the key to the sheds works on the lock on the hatch too."<br /><br />We looked at the Corporal, he shrugged it was true.<br /><br />"Well, what did you see?" Jackson pressed, "Out with it private. Experiments on what? People?"<br /><br />"No..." he shook his head "They figured out how to turn steel into gold."<br /><br />"What's that... Alchemy?" the corporal asked.<br /><br />"I guess."<br /><br />"No," I had to interject "that's impossible, <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">alchemy</span> has been a pipe dream for centuries, and besides the belief was that you'd <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">transmute</span> an element close to Gold on the periodic table into gold... not steel, maybe platinum or even better lead. True, Persians did attempt this, and as a side effect created modern <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">chemistry</span> but alchemy has been debunked"<br /><br />"Listen to Professor smarty pants" Jackson mocked, "You learn that in college too where they taught you how to unhook a bra, do a keg stand, and add two plus two?"<br /><br />"I read <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error">a lot</span>. Matter of fact, I'm reading a book on alchemy right now, which is where Tony probably got his inspiration for this ghost story, huh Tony?"<br /><br />"I don't know what book is your foot locker, I don't have a key to that," Tony said. "But I do have a key to the hatch." He held in it the air and we got quiet again. As we did the wind grew louder and it swayed the key tempting us.<br /><br />Slowly, we all looked at the Corporal, even disbelieving me.<br /><br />He shifted uneasily from side to side, "Well, alright boys," he seemed inspired. "See what I'm going to do is call an end to this little poker game right here. And you see this pot right here, I figure you all forgot to ante an extra $20, and since I'm winning this pot without a showdown, I'll just take it and head to bed. Know what I mean." He started pulling the money from our stacks.<br /><br />"No way partner we don't got no extra ante," Jackson stood up "and even if we do I got Kings full. How you going to beat that Corporal." He flung his cards to the table.<br /><br />"That's a nice hand but see I got a royal flush and you can believe me and you can award me the pot and go into that hatch without me showing or "knowing" what you are up to... If I have to spell it out to you, you can also not believe me that I have a royal flush and I'll fold, you'll win the hand without these antes and we'll play poker all night instead?"<br /><br />Jackson fumed getting it, "That's a big pot."<br /><br />Corporal nodded, "It is."<br /><br />"Maybe you should just keep the extra antes. Sure seems like you are asking me to give up a lot more than these guys... Know what I mean."<br /><br />"That is true. But that's poker. Sometimes you are the fire hydrant and sometimes you are the dog. Look at it this way, Jackson from Jackson, sounds like there is a bigger pot down below. And in case any of you guys bring anything back I want my share too. Know what I mean?" The corporal swiped up his money and stood eyeing each of us.<br /><br />We nodded. As soon as the Corporal was out of ear shot, we all quietly got up and followed Tony toward the hatch. When we first made camp months ago nine tanks sat in a perimeter around the hatch with one <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">turrent</span> facing every direction, but now after months of inactivity and apparent <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">disinterest</span> from the Iraqis, only one tank remained, and the rest were sent elsewhere. We knew the crew inside was probably sleeping or playing poker too.<br /><br />The perimeter had long since stopped looking outward and they damned sure weren't going to start looking inside the facility so we walked pretty freely toward the hatch. I immediately noticed the sand that had built up on the hatch since we'd been there was displaced and only a thin film of sand sat on it now. Tony or somebody else had definitely been in it.<br /><br />He slotted the key into the lock, turned it, and eased the massive lock open. It clanged loudly agains the hatch. We all warily looked to see if anybody had heard.<br /><br />"Wait til you see this guys," Tony smiled.<br /><br />He pulled the hatch open and clicked on his flashlight, we followed suit and stepped down into the long dark, damp flight of stairs.C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-69797116633389236772009-04-20T20:47:00.000-07:002009-04-20T20:54:45.106-07:00I Hate Big HandsI hate big hands. Not AA or KK because I love those starting hands. And sidenote, I hate those idiots that complain about big pairs and then never draw a profit from them. No, I'm being literal. I hate big HUMAN HANDS. You know those big giant hands with fat frankfurter fingers crowned by thick calloused fingernails that are as wide as postage stamps always yellow and blocking any light from reflecting off of possible cards underneath.<br /><br />In live play, you look at those Ogre hands and you never know if it's your turn to act or if the guy has got a pair of cards buried under there and he is contemplating monosyllabically in his head. "DO... I... CALL? DO... I... BET?" You can hear the thought pushing the pea-sized brain about his matching Easter Island skull like an Astronaut farting his propolsion in a space-station. Anyway, sorry to get off on a tangent, but Astronauts have been known to eat an extra batch of freeze-dried Boston Beans just for the fun of bouncing around the station powered by toots. Come on, you know that sounds like fun.<br /><br />Back to my anger inspired by big hands. When I see massive hands I make a mental footnote, which is a lot like a real footnote, noticed when first thought about but never returned to, that I need to follow the action a little more closely. And I need to see if the guy folds or not, but my ADD always sets in when he's involved. It's like an observational blind spot. My mind is off thinking about farting astronauts when it's his turn to act and the pot is always pulled in before I can see if his chips have entered it when I do remember about that little mental footnote.<br /><br />The dealers rarely point out if there are cards under the penis-fingers. Sure enough, like the opposite of Schroedeger's Cat, whatever action you decide to do determines the exact opposite to be true. If you bet, he's deliberating: "DO... I... EAT... TO... NIGHT... WAIT... I... GOT... CARD... S." If you don't bet, there's nothing but air under those Troll palms.<br /><br />So yes, I hate big hands. F'ing Giant hands possessed by Poker Donkeys, frickin' mules packing up the mountain in a Sysphian quest to win with the worst hand whenever possible and only getting bounced down the mountain and out of the tournament after they've suicide bomber eliminated the best player all but drawing dead but hitting their miracle. You know the guy. He sends you to the rail and he's got a mountain of chips but somehow he beats you to bathroom.<br /><br />You chose not to pee next to him because if his hands are that big... Yeah, admit it, just like farting your way to an Earthrise on the portal window, this thought has creeped in your mind too.<br /><br />Still, next time, you see the best player at your table (those rare times it isn't you) get bounced like a check written by Ed McMahon by Giant Hands get ready to reap the riches because Giant Hands luck has run out. If he could put together sophisticated thought, he might question why his luck runs out just after busting the local Phil Hellmuth, but his pea brain can only muster so many thoughts, and it must get tired bouncing around his inner cranium. <br /><br />But fear not, he'll be there next week to do the same. Try and watch his hands and his cards OR just play some <a href="http://www.omahapoker.com/">online poker</a> and not see the guy mashing his mouse with brick hands.<br /><br /><br />www.gulfcoastpoker.net<br /><br /><br /><br /><script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/addthis_widget.php?v=12"></script>C.S.noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-81373138579143759942009-03-29T22:26:00.001-07:002009-03-29T22:48:57.258-07:00What's Cracklin'"Name of the game is Texas Hold 'em..." Pete dealt the cards slowly to each of us. He gave the same introduction every week, every single week for a year, and we always played the same game, Texas Hold 'em. "You get two cards, there will be a flop which consists of three frags of hope, a turn, which only make some of you knuckleberrys even more hopeful, and then that river which will win me the pot." <br /><br />Tony rolled his eyes at the Sargeant as he always did and Corporal Timmons shot him a glare... as he always did.<br /><br />I hoped I'd win, as I usually did.<br /><br />Marks sweating like a call girl in confession, told us for the 5,000th time he was "Burning up. Dang. This is fucking hot."<br /><br />Iraq is hot. Steaming, burning insufferable heat. You could taste the sand in the wind and we were located in the most wayward, godforsaken corner of the desert any troop could hope to be. We called ourselves the Lost Guardsmen. <br /><br />We were entrenched in a large camp, basically guarding a hatch in the ground. A couple of men from DC, CIA surely, had dropped in and taken a look, left and then six months later nothing. Still we guarded it.<br /><br />Day after day of nothingness. Not that we'd complain. Plenty of guys we know elsewhere dealing with road side bombs and citizens who wave at them one minute shooting at them from a window the next. No in terms of Iraq, despite the boredome we had it pretty good. Most of us had already gotten enough of a taste of action in Afghanistan to know it was all it was cracked up to be.<br /><br />If whatever we were guarding was valuable the Iraqis hadn't figured it out yet. We didn't feel like soldiers or guards we felt more like inmates. Every couple of weeks a copter would fly in with supplies and fresh decks or cards and we basically played poker and traded our salaries around like it was gold.<br /><br />That's what Marks thought was in the hatch. Gold. Babylonian gold. <br /><br />We tried to talk the officers into letting us peak in the hatch but no dice.<br /><br />Somebody said that they were actually chemical weapons. A warehouse full of anthrax or something.<br /><br />Others said if it were gold or munitions some warlord would have come looking for it. But nothing.<br /><br />So we waited and "guarded."<br /><br />Every night when it got cool and not too windy we played poker. Jackson, from Jackson, Mississippi, had somehow gotten some Makers Mark into camp and we were sipping it. I no longer bothered keeping track of where my rifle was and I thought of a TV show my dad got on DVD recently, Sgt. Bilko.<br /><br />As we passed around the cards, Pete went through the <a href="https://poker.bwin.com/poker.aspx?content=texasholdem">texas hold'em rules</a> again, and we kept sipping the Makers Mark and talk shifted to the hatch. Jackson spoke first in a quiet whisper, "I've been down there you know..."<br /><br />"Down where?" The corporal asked.<br /><br />"Don't get all narc on me, but I've been down the hatch... went last night," I couldn't take it no more.<br /><br />"You went down the hatch?" The corporal swelled up.<br /><br />"Yeah, and if you want to know what I saw, you'll agree to shut the fuck up, right?"<br /><br />"Corporal you can keep it quiet right?" Tony got real close to Corporal Timmons.<br /><br />The corporal wilted, "If the sarge is fine with it..."<br /><br />"Of course, I'm fine with it. Now, Jackson, from Jackson, what's in that hatch of ours?"<br /><br />www.gulfcoastpoker.net<br /><br /><div><script type="text/javascript">addthis_url='<data:post.url/>'; addthis_title='<data:post.title/>'; addthis_pub='ezedcota';</script><br /><script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/addthis_widget.php?v=12"></script></div>C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-40928723673740671752009-03-03T22:37:00.000-08:002009-03-03T23:23:05.806-08:00Cut-Day"I can't go for that, no-o, no can do," she smiled with a glint in her eye.<br /><br />We had spent half a day together, a long reckless day, driving 100 mph on the interstate in a beat up Honda that looked like it would struggle to go 70. Already that morning we took a dip in a fountain in a public park. We split a beer and then she came up with the destination.<br /><br />We were cutting school. Anything went. Where we were supposed to be it was lunch time, b lunch, the second of three, yet we were far from the cafeteria. I could only imagine the stale baked ziti on a tray.<br /><br />I watched her struggle to reach the volume knob on the radio. All she had to do was sit up, but for the last half hour she was leaned back as far as the seat would go, her legs perched up with her feet hanging gingerly out the window. She giggled when she finally adjusted it.<br /><br />She slid a cigarette out of the box on her purse in between us, a Camel lite. As she reached for her lighter, I started to laugh and grabbed her hand.<br /><br />"I can't go for that," despite doing 90 and weaving through the sparse traffic on I-10, I managed to make eye-contact with my most disapproving look.<br /><br />"No-o?"<br /><br />"No can do."<br /><br />She wrangled the lighter from me, and laughed some more.<br /><br />"No!" I said.<br /><br />"The window's open. Don't worry."<br /><br />"No."<br /><br />"Com'n it's not like your mom's going to know."<br /><br />I shook my head.<br /><br />"The WINDOW'S OPEN!"<br /><br />I shook my head defeated. I didn't have to say it, she knew I relented. With her I always did. She always got her way. Where has that ever got me I thought to myself?<br /><br />She smiled her little Meg Ryan, self-satisfied cute as hell smile, and I stopped caring. I just wanted that smile to never go away.<br /><br />I had agreed to go to the casinos on the coast with her, on our cut day, but on one condition and that was not to smoke in my Mom's car. 30 miles to go and she was doing just that. But she was smiling.<br /><br />She giggled as she breathed in the cigarette, she made an exaggerated effort to blow it out the window and I appreciated it. I watch the smoke disperse and stared at her long, tanned legs. They shined in the sunlight. I forced myself to look back at the road.<br /><br />"We won't need I.D.?" I asked again.<br /><br />"As long as you don't break the bank we'll be alright," she cooed, "just don't hit the jackpot on the slots or anything like that. Would suck not being able to keep it."<br /><br />"And your sure, Tracey will mark us as not absent?"<br /><br />"Don't want to ruin your perfect attendence? Jeez... you are already accepted in like five colleges."<br /><br />"I can't be marked as absent..."<br /><br />"Yes... It's okay. Stop worrying. You'll perfect attendence will be intact tomorrow. She's fudged plenty of cuts for me. She's the one that collects it and proofs it every day."<br /><br />"... okay, and she's a space cadet."<br /><br />"Chill. It's okay."<br /><br />I sighed. I had never cut school before. In fact, I had never had a beer before, never hung out socially with HER before, but today as I was driving her to school she insisted we go right past it. I always thought she was just being nice to the neighbor boy who drove her to school, but now I didn't know so much. Maybe she liked me... like I liked her.<br /><br />"And don't worry, we'll go play poker or something, they won't card us," she pulled her seat up and leaned over to me. As she got closer, my heart either stopped, jumped up into my throat, or sped out of my chest. "Don't worry," she lightly flicked my earlobe with her tongue and giggled, "besides, I think poker players are hot." Wow! What a day. "You going to wear these?" She took my sunglasses in her hand and twirled them before me.<br /><br />"Am I going to be on TV?" I tried to find cool, I didn't really.<br /><br />"No," she riffled the hair on the back of my neck with a gentle blow.<br /><br />I re-adjusted my hands on the wheel trying not to lose myself. Our first moment. I took stock of it. Going about 87 on I-10 East with Florida in the rear-view mirror. One day I'll tell our kids about it, screw that tomorrow I'm going to tell everybody about it. "I don't think I'll need them."<br /><br />"What if I want you to wear them," she was trying to distract me. The hairs all over my body stood up as she put soft lips to my neck.<br /><br />I swallowed hard.<br /><br />Her hand found it's way to my hair and she was almost in my seat.<br /><br />"I want you to wear them," she said huskily.<br /><br />"Okay."<br /><br />"Okay?"<br /><br />"Well, I may need a little more convincing?"<br /><br />"Really?" More laughing. "Let's see how the poker goes."<br /><br />She pulled away, and then slid the sunglasses on my face, gently.<br /><br />That was living.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.gulfcoastpoker.net/">http://www.gulfcoastpoker.net/</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><script src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/addthis_widget.php?v=12" type="text/javascript"></script><br /><br /><br /><!-- AddThis Button for Post END -->C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-43425748453134681212009-02-07T12:12:00.000-08:002009-02-07T13:17:42.658-08:00Folding Pocket TwosIt hesistated as if stuck for a moment and then wandered in chaotic fashion downward. I could not help but idly stare at the first rain drop that thunked on my window. The noise had drawn me to it. I waited for others to follow it but they did not come at first. I had only the trail of the drop to divert my attention from the computer, and the darkening of the skyline behind it.<br /><br />I waited, and waited for the next raindrop to hit. A gust rattled the drainpipe on the side of my house and shifted even the sturdy oak in my front yard but no more drops. Still, I waited for the second rain drop. I looked for darkening mositure on the street but it did not come.<br /><br />My computer beeped, it was my turn to act. The screen for bwin's online poker site blinked before me. As I looked down, it was just then the rain pittered and pattered on the sill and the window. A wave of wind pregnant with water swept across the street.<br /><br />"Pocket 2s under the gun," I said as I fired out a bet hoping not to get reraised. Sure enough the agressive player in seat 5 put in a raise. Against him I might be good. The clever player on the button raised over us both. Re-steal.<br /><br />I thought about making a move myself. Lots of money in the pot. The rain attacked the window with each fit of wind. Should I just shove. The blinds folded. The drainpipe rattled against the gutter it was anchored to. Hmmm. I have but pocket deuces.<br /><br />I dejectedly hit the fold button. I made it more of decision then I needed to. Even if I was right I didn't need to get involved in the hand. We were on the cusp of the bubble.<br /><br />I went back to window watching, the rain blurring the dull surroundings out my front door. Bubbles of water coalesced then ran haphazardly down.<br /><br />This morning my boyfriend walked out angry. I tried his cell, but he hadn't answered. He didn't like me grinding all night on the computer. He hadn't liked his girl, spending more time with a poker site than with him. "Well you should have never transferred money to my account," I snorted to myself, "You should have never got me started. You should have never asked if I wanted to play online poker."<br /><br />The truth of the matter, James was jealous, I had turned his modest gesture of keep you busy money into a bankroll. I had conquered one level after another and was turning into a deadly force in multi-table tournaments, and poor James tilted away reload after reload. Unlike James I knew how to walk away from pocket deuces, I knew how to get away from something I should have given up long ago.<br /><br />The screen blinked at me, and I looked at 72 of clubs in the big blind. I noticed the wild player had half the stack he had the last hand. The clever button now had more chips. Maybe he didn't resteal.<br /><br />The loose player shoved on my blind. Oh well. He can have it. Then I smiled when the clever player called. In a second the rashness of tilt shove was confirmed. The autofold of me and the small blind zipped us into a showdown. Clever player held QQ and Mr. Wild held Q9. J107 came the flop. I snickered again as an 8 came on the turn. I wished for a K or a 9. It didn't come.<br /><br />I autofolded my 36 from the small blind.<br /><br />Across the street Mrs. Fischman stood on her doorstep using the paltry cover of her screen door to brave the rain. She called for her cat. I could see it squatting under her house glaring at the rain and ignoring her owner's beckoning.<br /><br />James and I had steadily drifted apart. Yes, I had become a wife to a computer, poker had become my preoccupation, indeed, my very occupation. I was making far more online than I did waitressing. I had a knack for the game, I had to play poker online.<br /><br />James was very jealous.<br /><br />I raised with J8 on the button and collected the blinds and antes.<br /><br />I raised again with 56 and got a caller from the clever player. Flop came 6104. I bet half the pot. He raised me. I fired back. He folded. One more player until the money.<br /><br />The wind snarled and whistled and I worried about a power failure. My chip stack would guarantee me an in the money finish but I liked my chances today. Several bad players were sitting on big stacks.<br /><br />Was James out in this? James packed up his iPod with a little bag of clothes. I assumed he was heading to the beach to gather his tilted thoughts. I didn't like this weather, but he was the type to obsolently sit in a lightning storm... if he was set on a day at the Beach. Far be it for weather to get in the way of what he wanted to do. Part of me thought I should let the worry go, I caught myself think the words... let him go.<br /><br />"Really? Let him go?" I asked myself. There was a lot to be said for James. He was going places. He had a good head on his shoulders and his father's construction business was booming. Every girl did a double take at his rugged looks and for the most part he treated me great.<br /><br />I folded a mediocre holding and watched the now thick rain pelt my window.<br /><br />His failures in poker weighed on me. His frustrations at not being able to let a losing session go. His unwillingness to pitch a hand. I told myself not to judge a person based on poker and I knew I only had to look at some of the awful people that were successes at this game to know it indicated nothing, but still James' failures at the game weighed on me.<br /><br />Maybe I shouldn't tell him to fold when watching him overplay a hand from behind. It only encouraged him to do opposite. Perhaps, I smothered him by outperforming him, and then sharing my triumphs with him... of course he resented me. Maybe I was the cause of his struggles... of our struggles.<br /><br />The cat had had enough and with lightning speed slinked through the rain up onto the door step. It got onto it's hind legs and scratched at the door. It demanded to be let in.<br /><br />Bwin blinked at me again. I folded. I had made the money.<br /><br />The storm whipped around a lawn-chair from my neighbor's yard and pitched it down the street, the white plastic bouncing onto the road with vigor. The cat was gone. Must have made it in.<br /><br />Where was Jim? I expected him to knock on the door. To whisper his apology and to work on things. He would come in out of the rain. I would let him back in. I realized, for the first time that day, I had thought it. I would let him back in. I said it, so I knew it was true. I didn't need to give up on us.<br /><br />The rain slowed. I smiled thinking of Jim in a wet shirt. He wasn't all bad.<br /><br />There was a beep. I looked at my <a href="https://poker.bwin.com/poker.aspx">bwin</a> table and saw a hand still in action. It was my blackberrry. It's red light blinked, I had a message.<br /><br />I looked at it... James... "I thought it over. We are a bad fit. We can't stay holding on to something we should have given up a long time ago. I'm sorry for the way I've treated you but we need to let it go. I'll get my things tomorrow."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.gulfcoastpoker.net/">http://www.gulfcoastpoker.net/</a>C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-75413572028744017502009-01-20T22:19:00.000-08:002009-01-20T22:21:43.598-08:00Okay, there's a card in there...It is through the corridor of trees, rangy oaks swollen with Spanish Moss and made languid by the breeze, that I rush toward Oglethorpe’s home. My feet burned with wear and cold and now the shoe leather no longer protected instead the jagged edges of holes turned inward cut and scalded against the base of my toes. The furrows of departed wagon wheels, mud tracks hardened into permanence, and their intertwined serpentine ridges made agony of my ankles, but still I looked forward and not downward, as the once muddy but now frozen drive rose higher with just the wisp of sated smoke from his chimney visible in the distance.<br /><br />Behind it, grey bounding clouds slowly bellowed a storm, darkening like nightfall even in the afternoon. Weary or not, close to my goal or far from it, I would have edge to my step as I could feel the weight of the front baring forward. I leaned into the thicker air and anticipated the whipping winds and slanted bullets of sleet. A rolling, rumbling grumble tumbled across the sky, and the branches splayed outward caught in the new pressure’s fury. The moss and leaves spiraled upward into a dark cluster of twilight confetti. <br /><br />I quickened my step even more. The gaps between gusts shortened with each bluster and through the last of the pauses, as the branches unbowed and the leaves and moss settled, the house encompassed more with each step on the hardened mud. As I ascended the rise, it loomed, like the storm at its back, rising bigger and broader with darkness.<br /><br />A wooden rickety mess was what I expected, surely this home, this frontier manor could barely have had time to grow and age as this house had, but the stripped paint, and weathered ballastrades grew visible. Harsh jagged angles, slits for windows, and destitute annexes accosted me as the wind indeed whipped anew. <br />The once languid breeze now a combustible gale under an explosion of frozen rain, a bitter jarring spittle so thick I could barely see one foot for the other. In it I had no more time to absorb the audacity of the structure, this somehow sturdy monument of disrepair and its contradictions, was all the more closer yet I could barely make it out.<br /><br />Directly, I found myself on the threshold and though an overhang cast a long sillouethe of protection it was false one, as still fiery sleet found me even as I clung to the door for cover.<br /><br />An iron knocker as pitch black as the door raked my temple as I tried to envelope my head in my jacket. At once, I grabbed the knocker and punched it’s barrel into the door time and time again. It was the frantic knock of a hurried child and I decided weather excused my failing in decorum.<br /><br />The storm absorbed the house, the sleet and ice now hard falling thick snow. It was no feathery respite instead the temparture had dropped at least 10 degrees and the accumulation was absorbing my ankles. The cold was all I knew. My feet burned icily.<br /><br />I had been at my goal only moments and already the singlemindedness of my journey was replaced with a new solitary thought, I needed warmth.<br /><br />I couldn’t believe that mere moments before this jarring weather was an impossibility. And now I felt the the cold whispy breath of death chilling my marrow.<br /><br />I took from an inner pocket the weathered playing card, the Jack of Cups that would be my introduction and I felt myself trembling. It was hard to tell the trembling from the shivering but the sudden fury of nature weakened me in fear. My teeth rattled in an uncontrolled spasm.<br />F<br />irst my fingers, then my palms and quickly even my wrists numbed.<br /><br />I wiped snow off the card.<br /><br />I submitted to the weather and leaned into the door ready to fold into a ball to contain my fleeting heat.<br /><br />Then, the massive door opened with answered urgency and I fell twisting backward into the house.<br /><br />From the floor I could see candles and gas-lights flickering up along a thick staircase behind me and worse I could taste the mildewed tufts of the worn dark carpet and somehow my frozen nostrils still could find a scent of rotted leaves and wet dead animal. <br /><br />I looked up at two narrowed eyes on the outer halo of a candle parting the darkness peering down at me.<br /><br />The candle moved upward bringing the lower face into view.<br /><br />Yellow teeth parted and thin lips pursed a single word, “Move.”<br /><br />“I’m… I’m Edgar Aames, I’ve tr…”<br /><br />“Move!”<br /><br />The candle lowered toward me, and a large heavy hand grabbed my coat and dragged me from the threshold. I slid on the worn carpet toward the stair cast like a fishing lure spinning farther into the dark house..<br /><br />I heard the door close resolutely and the noise of the hammers of its lock falling in a jarring twist.<br /><br />The air was barely warmer inside then outside. But it was warmer.<br /><br />I start to push myself up.<br /><br />Suddenly, a thick boot jammed into my chest, expelling my breath and winding me, and compressing me against the floor. I struggled for air and as I coughed the boot pressed harder. It felt like my lungs were imploding.<br /><br />The mouth of my greeter slowly lowered into candle-illuminated view and I barely made out the reedy eyes glare at me as I might a stray dog whose intentions for trespass were unclear. <br /><br />“Edgar Aames? Means nothing.”<br /><br />I swallowed and reached for air trying to pull it in.<br /><br />The boot pressed harder.<br /><br />“Back to the blizzard?” the thin lips hissed. <br /><br />I felt the wilted edge of the card in my hand and as I struggled to breathe I brought it into the candle-light.<br /><br />The eyes peered into me.<br /><br />I was light-headed and felt a thousand tiny blades surging to my bloodstream from my depleted lungs.<br /><br />Fingernails scrathed into my palm as my captor grabbed at the card. He hurriedly turned it over.<br /><br />“Jack of… Cupsss,” the final word slithered into pause.<br /><br />The boot’s weight slowly, absentmindedly abated, and I watched one hand holding the candle move closer to the one holding the card. I caught half a breath and shook my head slowly to steady my consciousness.<br /><br />After a moment of his study, his thumb rubbed across its face a yellowed claw digging into it.<br /><br />I gathered my breath and at once I was pulled upward. The warm fetid breath washed over me as he intoned, “Who are you… Edgar Aames?”<br /><br />www.gulfcoastpoker.net<br /><!-- AddThis Button for Post BEGIN --><br /><div><script type='text/javascript'>addthis_url='<data:post.url/>'; addthis_title='<data:post.title/>'; addthis_pub='ezedcota';</script><script src='http://s7.addthis.com/js/addthis_widget.php?v=12' type='text/javascript'></script></div><br /><!-- AddThis Button for Post END -->C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-42278677918264843462008-11-29T21:27:00.000-08:002008-11-29T21:50:26.507-08:00Speed kills...Thoughts of a bad-ass poker player v. 1.<br /><br />I looked down at pocket 5s, I wanted a cigarette pretty bad, but I had a feeling about the hand. A pretty flop of A59 rainbow played out in my head. I scratched my temple. Might even raise this bitch I thought to myself. <br /><br />I spat out two the big chips spinning them in the air and them coming to rest on one another. I half-laughed half-sneered and leaned back eyeing the idiots at my table. I licked my lips in anticipation as one after another called me down thinking I was overplaying another shitty hand again.<br /><br />I tried to run my fingers smoothly through my hair but they caught on the dirt and tangled curls so I just scratched the back of my head. The lady in seat two caught my awkward movement and I tightened my eyes into a glare. She looked away.<br /><br />The dealer, another jackass with a rap, the same one, over and over again, put the flop cards down, and teased us before turning them saying his catchphrase, "Wait for it..."<br /><br />I didn't even bother looking. I fired out a bet, confident my set was there and lost one of them callers. The two other fools hadn't had enough though.<br /><br />A tall guy in seat 8, studied the board waiting for the turn. He was on a draw, that was clear enough to see. I smiled, "Chasers, never learn."<br /><br />The turn looked like brick city to the guy in seat 8. I fired a larger bet without even thinking. The guy in the middle called and seat 8, despite a good price, but not quite the right price folded. See you meat, I muttered.<br /><br />I decided the board was irrelevant. I eyed the dirtbag in the 5 seat. He had a mullet, a couple of Phil Mickelsons (man-boobs), and ability to call you down with rags. He was good for the game.<br /><br />The dealer said, "Wait for it" again. I tilted my head at him and he saw I was irritated and fired out the river.<br /><br />Out of the corner of my eye I watched seat 5 try and check out of turn. MORON. <br /><br />I don't need to play a board, I don't need to see my cards. "All you can handle," I pushed my stack in toppling the chips.<br /><br />The dirtbag turned to me with a straw in his mouth, " I was hoping you'd say that."<br /><br />He turned over A2.<br /><br />I showed my 55.<br /><br />The dealer smiled and said, "Wait for it" one more time. Then pushed the pot to the dumbass.<br /><br />"Pocket 5s, you a stupid shit aren't you, speeding with that mess,"<br /><br /><br />www.gulfcoastpoker.net<br /><br /><div><script type="text/javascript">addthis_url='<data:post.url/>'; addthis_title='<data:post.title/>'; addthis_pub='ezedcota';</script><br /><script src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/addthis_widget.php?v=12" type="text/javascript"></script></div>C.S.noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-31516212262637037832008-08-27T07:13:00.000-07:002008-08-27T07:22:29.498-07:00Quick NoteI think at times, it is good to step back, and recognize these works of fiction as just that. They are fictional accounts. Nobody here condones, endorses, or supports cheating or collusion or any of the tactics used by the characters in these stories. In fact, part of writing about them is to expose their methods to a broader base of poker players. The material for these stories were heavily influenced by a couple of books written about how to protect yourself from card cheats. We encourage our readers to research these topics to better protect themselves when they play a card game anywhere. Many of the episodes that were to come were going to deal with signaling, mechanics, and methods employed by cheaters. We hope these stories are infomative and educational as well as entertaining. Just like a movie studio doesn't endorse the violence of its characters nor do we endorse cheating.C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-20760580845329035362008-08-26T07:58:00.001-07:002008-08-26T09:55:00.508-07:00Pitch’n Cards<span xmlns=""><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;"><span style="color:black;">"Moral of the story," seat 9 a drunkard from out of town said dramatically, "don't chase, because you might hit," his cards were almost at the center of the table, he slowly turned one over and then next, "...and still lose." He cackled and nobody joined him.</span><span style="color:#aabbcc;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;"><span style="color:black;">"Good pot," I say. The jerk in the nine seat wins again. A $500 pot and he tosses me a single. Generous. </span><span style="color:#aabbcc;"><br /></span><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;"><span style="color:black;">His opponent, Gene D, a regular wearing his hoodie with his website, <a href="http://www.gulfcoastpoker.net/"></span>www.gulfcoastpoker.net<span style="color:black;"> </span></a></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;"><span style="color:black;">emblazoned all over it, is irate. He turns red and lowers his sunglasses to glare at seat 9. Gene D does not like to get slow rolled.<br /></p></span></span><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;color:black;">As I go to the shuffle machine I meet eyes with Gene. He shakes his head in anger. I nod. I understand completely.<br /></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;color:black;">When I'm pitching cards I do little things to keep it interesting. I'll try and land them under a player's hands if they are resting on the table, I'll try and topple a chip stack if it's close to the action or I'll make a complaining player have to stretch to get to them. The nine seat has had to do a lot of stretching to get to his cards. He's been on a 5 hour heater and is weighing down his side of the table with redbirds and yet he's barely thrown us dealers a bone. Plus, he's slowrolling like his a 9th grader playing cards for the first time.<br /></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;"><span style="color:black;">At the dealer change, Janie told me to beware and she wasn't kidding, Seat 9 is a no tipping asshole.</span><span style="color:#aabbcc;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;"><span style="color:black;">Assholes that don't tip deserve to be fucked with. I'm not obvious about it as sometimes the nice people that actually do tip, tend to take sides against a lippy dealer. But if they really push me, like this guy has done a couple of times, most people will side with the dealer. </span><span style="color:#aabbcc;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;color:black;">It's tough being liked when you are pitching cards. Only one person can be happy per hand. And per revolution that means I've made most of the table mostly unhappy. The idiots don't seem to grasp they are only "entitled" to win one hand in 10. If they have any talent they might be able to drag 2 or 3 out of ten or win huge pots instead of small ones and turn a profit. But the way they see it, they want to win 10 hands in 10.<br /></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;"><span style="color:black;">Sure I say the sarcastic "thank you" when they give me nothing, but with a jerk like this one it means nothing. Right over his head. Or sometimes they'll catch it, as he did a hand ago. "I've tipped you already," he bitched. "You want all my profit? This rake's killing me anyway. Moral of the story, just do your job, deal the cards, and be thankful you found somebody willing to give you a paycheck. Or go to college and get real job." He winked too. I hate fucking winkers. Moral of the story?</span><span style="color:#aabbcc;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;"><span style="color:black;">Sometimes, I make a face when I push a pot and nothing's pushed my way. On this guy, that would be worthless, so I just join the other 9 players in hating him and in wishing bad karma on the dude. Problem is it's not coming.</span><span style="color:#aabbcc;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;"><span style="color:black;">On top of that the rest of the table starts to get mad at me because this guy's winning so big. Like it's my fault. Like we dealers want the dipshits that don't tip to win all the pots. Like we want to piss off the regulars in seat 1 and 2 that "over" tip on a good night. Like we want more of this guy's abuse.</span><span style="color:#aabbcc;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;"><span style="color:black;">I subtlety try to clue in a couple of the familiar faces I'm pulling for them. They don't get it as they angrily throw their cards to the muck.</span><span style="color:#aabbcc;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;"><span style="color:black;">Another pot to him and he informs the table it's like taking candy from 9 babies. He's got a table on tilt. Sweet.</span><span style="color:#aabbcc;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;"><span style="color:black;">Seat 1 gets involved in a big hand. Seat 1 is a tight ass. He's not going to showdown without second nuts at a minimum. I fear that's all he'll have though and seat 9 will have the nuts. The way the night's been going of course he will.</span><span style="color:#aabbcc;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;"><span style="color:black;">At the river, the board gets paired and suddenly the flopped flush is in danger. Looks like seat 9 just got lucky… again. He's bellying up to the table, "What you got?" he says to seat one. My dealer shift is over after this hand. Phuong is waiting behind me, I give him the look and he knows just what kind of person seat 9 is.</span><span style="color:#aabbcc;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;"><span style="color:black;">All the chips were in at the turn. Seat 9, the slowrolling asshole pushes his cards forward just a bit. It's the dramatic flair the dick employs, "I ain't got much…"</span><span style="color:#aabbcc;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;"><span style="color:black;">Seat 1 knows he's beat and shows the flush fully aware he's about to get slowrolled. Seat 9 "Wow, ace high flush." Just like he did to Gene D, he further pushes his cards face down toward the center of the table as though he's beat. I wink at seat 1. And as quickly as I can, before the speech starts, I sweep up seat 9's cards with a no-look motion and put them into the muck.</span><span style="color:#aabbcc;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;"><span style="color:black;">Seat 9 is enraged. "You pushed them to the muck, sir." I sweep the huge pot to seat 1, eye Phuong again and quickly leave.</span><span style="color:#aabbcc;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: white"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;color:black;">Moral of the story asshole, don't fuck with the dealer.</span></p></span>C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-68387976584566325802008-08-18T23:09:00.000-07:002008-08-19T00:07:53.895-07:00Shark Chum LuAnne IX: Who Guards the Guards?Randall followed Cuba on a smoke break. It was going according to plan. All the players were in place. Temptation in a low cut dress was one seat change away from working her magic on Tran. As he walked he thought about how the kid had been playing.<br /><br />Very solid. He was picking up on the same soft spots Randall had identified. He was betting with impunigty at just the right times and folding when he was narrowly beat. He had a real talent for it. He got into a bit of trouble only once or twice when his opponent hit river cards and so cheaply bet the kid had to call with losers but other than that he was good.<br /><br />Cuba interrupted Randall's thoughts, "Hey, man you know anybody in Mississippi that can unload some laptops?"<br /><br />Randall had been out of the unloading game for some time but his curiousity was piqued, "Laptops?"<br /><br />Cuba grinned, "Yeah, we've been running the metal plate polka."<br /><br />Even to Randall this was a new one, "Refresh me."<br /><br />"Well, with all these long lines for security these days we run a variation on an old hustle," Cuba looked left and right even though everybody walking by was focused on something else and the slot machine chatter was drowning out the conservation even two feet away. "We buy a plane ticket for say 10 pm and get to the airport there at 10 am. We wait until we see a guy with a laptop bag and get in security in front of him. When we are about to get waved through the metal detector we stall until the laptop gets into the machine. Once it's in the X-rayer the first guy goes through. Then the second guy, lights up the metal detector like it's christmas. Oops, I forgot this huge belt buckle I'm wearing. Did my key chain do it this time? Did this metal pen I got from work do it? And finally, you know what, bossman, it must be this metal plate I got stowed in my pocket."<br /><br />"Right. I get it," Randall nodded. "Meanwhile your buddy is making a U-Turn out the terminal with that guy's laptop. Not bad. You can pull off what three or four a day? Each terminal and maybe a shift change or two."<br /><br />"Actually, a little better. We got a ton of busted laptops that we switch out. It used to be better when they didn't make people take their laptops out of their bags. We'd be able to switch it out with a comparable weight, and nobody would know until they were 10000 feet up. Now, we need to match laptops. We'd pull that scam 10 to 20 times a day the old way. Now 6 is pushing it. Kind of like that story you told me that one time about Chuckie D, in Austin," Cuba's eyes gleamed. "Sometimes the easiest place to steal something is where the people are too busy protecting something else. Didn't you used to say that."<br /><br />"Chuckie D in Austin?" Stacey walked up. Randall still couldn't get over her dress, "Do tell..."<br /><br />Randall looked back toward the table.<br /><br />"I'm third man walking sugar, " Stacey said. "Hi Cuba, eyes up here please. Randall, the kid's not going anywhere. The four seat is tilting and Tran's just dying for a hand to snap him off again. Tell me about Chuckie D in Austin."<br /><br />"Alright," Randall relented. "Short version. One night after a game of cards Chuckie D was showing off this gold plated pistol. Real James Bond Golden Gun shit. I knew Chuckie D didn't have the slightest clue where to buy something like that. He could afford it but it's not like he'd be getting something special made. He had to have stolen it. He starts claiming he killed a Vietnamese general during the war and took the gun then. People were eating it up.<br /><br />"For whatever reason, maybe it's because Chuckie D's such a snake, I decide to mess with him a bit. I tell him he didn't and that he was lying. And you know how Chuckie D hates to get called out. He says, if he's lying I got to prove it or else I was getting a golden bullet to the skull. I bet him $5,000 grand I could prove it in three days. And since it was stolen, not only would I be able to prove to everybody it was stolen and I'd also steal it from him. I think I said because I didn't trust him, I'd bring the gun myself. Something like that. Anyway, when he'd show he'd give me the five grand and I'd give him the gun. To sweeten it, if I didn't have the gun he'd get 5 large regardless."<br /><br />"Stealing from Chuckie D?" Stacey's eyes lit up. "No wonder you never told me. That's not the brightest thing you've ever done."<br /><br />"I didn't steal from Chuckie D," Randall grimaced. "I stole from the police."<br /><br />"Stole from the police..." Stacey shook her head. "Now, you are sounding like Chuckie D.... Go on."<br /><br />"Tell her whatcha did," Cuba said nearly giddy.<br /><br />"That's what I'm doing. So, before Chuckie D left that night, I call my friend at the force and ask him if anybody's 'lost' a golden gun. Sure enough some rancher had been burgalrized while he was at a card game across town. So, I tell my buddy to send somebody to the parking lot out back, to wait for a gunshot and they'd have their crook. 30 minutes later I get to talking to Chuckie D again and tell him the gun's a fake and it probably doesn't even fire. Within about two minutes he's shooting a round off in the parking lot and the troopers pull up."<br /><br />"So he's in the tin and the gun is in the evidence room. Next morning, around the same time he was making bail, I had his golden gun in my hand. Had my partner at the time from El Paso walk right in there with a FBI badge and a fake warrant connecting the gun to a crime in L.A. Sure enough, Chuckie D came back three nights later fully aware everyone knew the gun was stolen because he got arrested, but confident he'd still win the bet because I wouldn't have the gun. He loves his technicalities. I gave him the gun and he gave me the 5k. Course, I made myself scarce around Austin for a while after that. Just to let him cool down."<br /><br />"The easiest time to steal something is when everybody there is too busy protecting something else," Cuba inhaled deeply on his cigarette. "Now, let's get back to the table folks."C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-25333999559835857112008-08-04T22:41:00.001-07:002008-08-04T23:28:18.558-07:00Shark Chum LuAnne VIII: Queens are a comin'Randall bided his time. He knew Tran would put in a long session and it was later that it would be time for the cleavage to close the deal. In the short run, Randall and Cuba focused on breaking Tran's brother. They'd want the geek to themselves and the wannabee hustler had to be out of the picture for that.<br /><br />The kid was good, he barrelled through opponents and showed a lot of moxie. Of course like a lot of chip bullies he had a pretty good tell. Like a dog fixing for a fight raising his hackles, Randall noticed the kid turned up the volume even higher when he didn't want a call. When his holding was marginal he'd intimidate his opponent even more.<br /><br />Still, the tell wasn't 100% on a couple of players he'd just up and check it down. Nonetheless, Randall was going to goad him a bit. After getting him off the table, he'd goad Tran, and then if he past his tests, it would be time for temptation in a dress.<br /><br />Tran's brother got in a big pot with Cuba. On the river Randall saw him flinch almost imperceptibly when a 10 of spades hit the board. He had been gabbing preflop to river but suddenly quieted. Cuba had correctly been calling him because he was weak, but now the 10 had to help. No flush draw... what did he hit. A gutterball. Cuba lifted his chips thinking about betting and Randall eyed him and ever so slightly shook his head.<br /><br />Cuba, paused and thought about it. He stared at the 10. How could that have helped the kid. Randall waited for his former partner to get it. Cuba laughed and said, "You got that gutterball on me? You bet me all the way to the river with a bad draw, and you land that gutterball. I'm going to check to you but I ain't giving you another cent."<br /><br />Tran's brother laughed heartily,"Yeah, I hit that straight." He threw his cards onto the table and forgoed betting the nuts to show off his hand. Randall, now watched as Tran slightly shook his head.<br /><br />A hour later after the four of them had cleared off the table with everybody but the nit a new face, Randall and Tran's brother locked horns with their Big Stacks. Randall held two black jacks and limped into the pot. Tran's brother, as he did with a multi-way limp fired a bet into the table, and challenged people to call.<br /><br />In his head Randall immediately went through the range of hands the guy could have. He was we7ak but he something to mix it up with. Maybe A9, A10 or a low pocket pair. This was pretty good situation for him. He called after a moment of thought.<br /><br />"Watch you got George Clooney?" the kid asked him. "You got something to play with? You got Queens or something?"<br /><br />"Yeah, Queens or something, one of those two. What you got? A9?" Randall asked.<br /><br />The dealer flopped a j87 rainbow board. Top set. Randall checked and started his prayers for an Ace to come. Tran's brother led out with another ambitious bet. Randall called.<br /><br />The turn was a brick 4 of clubs completing the four suits. Randall checked and Tran's brother stewed.<br /><br />"You got Queens? You trying to trap me? You want me to bet out? Well, I'm the mouse coming after the cheese!" He pushed in half his stack and stood behind his seat. Randall stewed. The kid kept talking. He wanted the kid to think he had a chance to buy the pot on the river. He went into acting mode but tried not to over-do it. The kid was good enough to spot a poser.<br /><br />Randall called and looked toward the center of the table with just the slightest bit of consternation. The river was a glorious Ace.<br /><br />The kid zipped up. Randall acted quickly, "I'm all in," and prayed the kid would call without thinking it through...<br /><br />His plan worked as he got insta-called and the kid almost fell over his chips putting them in the pot. He showed his losing hand first: A8, two pair. Randall show his set of Jacks and scooped the pot.<br /><br />For a second Randall thought he caught Tran glare at his brother. Interesting, Randall thought, maybe there was more to the family dynamic then first appeared.<br /><br />Tran's brother quickly rebought for 600 although his roll looked like it was about spent.<br /><br />Randall eyed his female co-hort a table away. Time for her to request a table change. If he or Cuba could felt Tran's brother soon the real action would start. Time for the needle.<br /><br />He raised his eyebrows at Cuba who gladly played the part.<br /><br />"Oh, you got another 600 to piss away?" Cuba smiled at the kid, "It was obvious to everybody but you he had you crippled." The Alabama cowboy let out a big chortle.<br /><br />"You think it funny? You laugh. I tell you what you play a hand with me. I take your money every other weekend Cuban, I'll take it again tonight."<br /><br />"Really, not if you going to call off you chips like that. You feeling sick? Kind of like you are homesick but instead of missing home you miss your chips. I call you chipsick. It's okay there they are, in front of... George Clooney. Maybe he'll let you visit them." The table got behind Cuba. "If you walk away from the table you can probably call them. Seems like only a minute okay you had them but they grow and go so fast these days."<br /><br />"Don't worry they'll soon be back. And I'll have some of your orphans too."<br /><br />"The prodigal sons will return?" Cuba laughed. "Why you'll only give them away again."<br /><br />Tran's brother looked at his first card and quickly said, "Yeah, I'm all in."<br /><br />He's got an ace Randall thought. The dealer reminded him he was betting out of turn.<br /><br />"Don't matter, it's binding, I'm all in."<br /><br />Alabama cowboy was first to act and limped. When it got to Tran's brother he shoved never looking at his second card. Randall had a mild decision to make as he got pocket 8s. Something about the cowboy's limp threw up a warning flag. He folded and sure enough the cowboy called and turned over two red queens.<br /><br />"There's your queens," Cuba laughed.<br /><br />Tran's brother showed his Ace then slowly peeled off his second card a seven.<br /><br />When the flop came out 779 he jumped up and exclaimed, "That's what I'm talking about!"<br /><br />The cowboy was crestfallen, so was Randall inside. His night was about to get much longer.<br /><br />Then on the river the Queen of Spades brought chaos and turned the hand upside down all over again. Tran's brother couldn't believe it.<br /><br />"Fuck that!"<br /><br />"Sir, no cussing... you know..." the dealer spoke up.<br /><br />"Yeah, fuck that, I'm playing some black jack."<br /><br />"Okay... Player out."<br /><br />On the inside Randall smiled.C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-83339047392007187052008-07-21T14:07:00.000-07:002008-07-21T15:03:44.656-07:00Shark Chum LuAnne VII: Cowboy BetRandall pretty quickly finagled a seat where Tran would be placed by slipping the floor man a c note. Within a couple of minutes Randall bulldozed over some passive players and started to build a bit of stack. He had bought in for half the big stack and with some disappointment looked at a nit sitting behind it that he had played with numerous times before. Cuba Perrilloux sat down seconds later and rolled his eyes at Randall when he saw who the big stack was.<br /><br />The nit, an old former navy man, was as tight as they came. He had 5 carefully manicured chip stacks in front of him, with the borders of each chip matching one another and each forming tight columns. He was an old man that took his time making up his mind, but was agitated easily when others took the same time to ponder. Randall imagined him in the slow lane of the highway mad when the car in front of him was going slightly slower but ignorant to the slow-downs he'd cause himself.<br /><br />Randall didn't know how he'd get that the nit's money into play but spotted some other targets that weren't just sitting around waiting for the best hand. A kid in early position called a pot all the way down with second pair. He lost to top pair top kicker. His play wasn't what made Randall recognize him as a fish, but it was his play verse a specific an opponent.<br /><br />The opponent was the nit, who raised with AQ and bet the Queen high board all the way. Kid, called off half his stack, with pocket 10s. He said, "I thought you wuz bluffing." Randall thought to himself, that guy forgot how to bluff years ago, probably when the Titanic went down.<br /><br />Randall made a point to see flops with both these guys. He hoped the nit would get a huge overpair and he could flop a set or something. He started to get a feel for the rest of his table and only one or two guys worried him slighty.<br /><br />Still, despite the action making his blood flow, his focus wasn't solely on the game. He could beat these nine in his sleep, and if not for them occasionally chasing when they shouldn't and catching on him he felt confident he'd bowl them over.<br /><br />As he waited for Tran to hit the table, in between scooping a pot with two pair and ordering a drink he watched the humble Tran practically sinking into the garish scenary. He was easy to miss as his brother was so emphatic in his gesticulations, and at that moment, Randall felt a different kind of action buzz. This kid could make him a lot of money. Nobody would see him coming or going, nor suspect him being in on fleecing the game. He imagined the kid dragging a huge pot with LuAnne driving up the action and all the local sharks trying to call her down.<br /><br />He hoped the kid was as good as Cuba claimed. Then he realized in a moment of introspection, part of his excitement was the potential challenge the kid would bring to the table. Randall, was about to play some serious poker with a new opponent, one that supposedly would outclass the field as easily as he. He eagerly awaited the dealer to whisper into the walkie talkie, "Seat open." When the old man nit flopped a set of Aces and busted two tourists, Randall heard the magic words. He watched the floor man point to Tran and his brother, and he felt the hairs on his arm raise a little bit.<br /><br />Sure enough Tran's brother came to the table brashly proclaiming, "How many suckas we got here today? Looks like 9 of them."<br /><br />Tran smiled briefly and adjusted his glasses. His brother threw down a wad of 100s on the table in a flourish and Tran quietly pulled the same amount from his wallet. A couple of the regulars eyed each other and Randall knew there would be some more open seats in few moments. So much for learning the table.<br /><br />Tran played solid poker, and kept chipping up in small pots. When he wasn't involved in the hand his eyes slowly circled the table studying each player. Randall, put on a pair of reflective sunglasses so he could solely watch the kid without being obvious about it. He watched Tran's eyes linger a little longer on the lesser players and then a few hands later he'd watch Tran outplay them, either value betting a marginal hand and getting a call from a worse one, or probably betting a better hand out of the pot. On one such hand, a guy with an Alabama drawl and a cowboy hat said, "That's a little bit too much for me to play this hand with... when you pretty obviously hit your flush. Good hand kid." The man showed KQ on a Queen high board. Tran smiled politely and dragged the pot.<br /><br />His brother turned the needle for him. "You folded KQ, you had a pair of queens with king kicker. YOU PLAY TOO TIGHT! You think that kid had a flush. He didn't have nothin'. You should have showed that bluff," he said to Tran, "I would have showed the bluff. I would have bet you off that hand, cowboy, with Seven Deuce offsuit."<br /><br />"If you had bet son," the Alabama cowboy stared him down, "I would have put all my chips in the middle. You play crap. That kid knows what he's doing."<br /><br />"I play crap?" the brother laughed. "I wouldn't have folded to the "flush" he didn't have if I were you, betcha you he had pocket 7s or something."<br /><br />"I'll betcha 5 dollars, son, he didn't have pocket 7s."<br /><br />"Make it 20 and I'll do it."<br /><br />"Deal," the cowboy and Tran's brother stared at Tran.<br /><br />Ahh... A morality test. Randall welcomed the opportunity to watch this play out.<br /><br />Tran looked from his brother to the man. He seemed genuinely uncomfortable. Randall just like the brother, was willing him to "Say pocket 7s, say pocket 7s, say pocket 7s."<br /><br />The cowboy came to his senses or to his latent racism, "Wait, a second, you two will proably stick together on account of..."<br /><br />"On account of what?" Tran's brother stood from his seat.<br /><br />"On account of... you guys probably knowing each other," the Alabama cowboy backed down a bit.<br /><br />"You want the bet or not. You already agreed, what are you racist? Saying just because we are Vietnamese he'll lie for me?" He's going to chase a fish away, Randall grimaced.<br /><br />"No... not that, but you guys are probably friends, I'm not from a round here, I don't know who knows who."<br /><br />Tran spoke up, "I won't say what I had but I will say it was suited." Randall painfully listened to his potential prodigy play the honest poker player and thought about getting up. Lie for $20 kid, He had to stop himself from shaking his head in disappointment.<br /><br />"IT WAS SUITED! Couldn't be a pair. Unless you guys are using fishy decks. Pay up son, I knew he had the flush."<br /><br />Tran's brother shook his head and tossed four red chips across the table, "He might not have had sevens but he definitely didn't have the flush. I at least know that, Cowboy."<br /><br />"Oh yeah, I'll bet you on that, too."<br /><br />"Hundred dolla," Tran's brother flashed another c-note.<br /><br />"Double or nothing," the Cowboy hedged.<br /><br />"Hundred dolla or nuthin, unless you scared, you know I right! That too much for you," Not bad baiting, Randall thought.<br /><br />"You're own." What's this, Randall thought to himself. What's this indeed.<br /><br />The pair stared at Tran again. Waiting for an answer. Tran looked from the man to his brother and displayed deep discomfort.<br /><br />"No, I didn't have the flush," Tran said sheepishly. Randall thought the kid was telling them truth but was still delighted to hear it. Cuba's eyes lit up when Tran said it and locked in on Randall. Randall nodded his appreciation.<br /><br />The Alabama cowboy was floored, "Well, how do we know he's telling the truth. I need to see the cards."<br /><br />"Uh-uh, bro, you had no problem taking my money without seeing his cards!" Tran's brother replied quickly. The rest of the table nodded in unison and after a pause the Alabama cowboy tossed the kid a hundred dollar bill buckling to the silent peer pressure.<br /><br />"Just a hundred anyway, even if you did cheat me," Then he muttered, "We should have turned that jungle into a hole."<br /><br />Tran and his brother ignored the comment.<br /><br />Randall liked what he just witnessed. He thought it might be a hustle. He hoped it was a hustle. He prayed it was a hustle.C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-24424721584785746992008-07-06T12:57:00.000-07:002008-07-06T13:46:59.237-07:00Shark Chum LuAnne VI: Tran the ManTran led a group of five Asian kids into the poker room. The floorman recognized him on sight and was already inputing him into the system. He knew the hangers on too and was typing quickly to get them on the list. <br /><br />Tran had the hip hop aesthetic down pat. His hat cocked a bit to the side, tight flat bill, and a logo that was an Asian character. The same letter hung from his neck glittering in diamonds. His pants hung low on his waist, but his track suit jacket two sizes too big hung even lower than his belt line. He wore tinted glasses, that were neither obviously perscription or sunglasses, because the tint was so light. Randall couldn't tell if it was for effect or not.<br /><br />He made a mental note, of the entire room eyeing Tran's entrance. Not exactly a complete unknown. He watched the reaction of several players, old salts that have seen everything, and the rolling of their eyes at Tran's arrival was a bad thing. <br /><br />Cuba nodded at the kid as the group moved by in one racous movement, and Tran smiled, "What up skinny man." Randall slowly eyed the player from top to bottom. He didn't like three things from the jump. <br /><br />"What's the problem with his tooth?" He whispered into Cuba's ear.<br /><br />"Problem what do you mean?" Cuba asked. "Does he have summer teeth or something? I haven't noticed,"<br /><br />Of course, you haven't Randall thought. "No, it's.. it's..."<br /><br />"You know sum-er here, some are theer, summer teeth" Cuba cracked.<br /><br />Randall ignored the joke, "No, his right canine... it's..."<br /><br />"K-9?"<br /><br />"His tooth it's... blinged out in diamonds."<br /><br />"Yeah," Cuba equivocated, "That's kind of his thing. His look you know."<br /><br />It wasn't his front tooth, so that made it slightly better, but still a canine drench in diamonds was going to attract attention. Randall thought of all the good grifters that insisted on getting tatoos and instead of being inconspicious made themselves walking targets. Already, Tran stood out, what would happen if and when Randall put some real money in his pocket.<br /><br />"I guess teeth can be pulled, huh?" Randall raised his eyebrows. Cuba seemed taken aback.<br /><br />"You are going to pull his tooth?"<br /><br />"No." Randall stewed. "Not yet, anyway."<br /><br />The second thing that bothered Randall was Tran's bluetooth earpiece. Like the group he traveled with it indicated this kid was easy to access and had a wide traveling party. People in Randall's line of business needed to have streamlined personal lives. With each person in the inner circle there was an exponential increase of risk. It was much easier when a potential horse or cohort was a loner, even better a loser with a silent I hate the world attitude. So much easier to train. This wasn't going well, Randall thought.<br /><br />The final thing that bugged Randall and would figure into his assesment of the kid, wasn't his cocksure confidence, good players have a little arrogance so that could be overcome, but it was his inability to conceal his intentions. He made a show of studying the tables to look for the soft money, he made a spectacle of himself as surveyed every corner, and the players didn't like him, that much was obvious. Not because he was good, but because, as Randall realized... "He's a bit of a prick, huh, Cuba?"<br /><br />Cuba turned and looked at him with a smile, "Yeah, <em>that</em> kid is a prick."<br /><br />"Okay, so let me obvious question," Randall spun on his stool facing Cuba fully, "How does a prick, that clearly has pissed off most of this room, who travels with a posse of wannabe gangsters, have a conscience? My first impulse is this kid may be too much of a live wire and untrustworthy, hardly the kind of kid we need to talk into a con, he looks like he's on the make right now... so fill me in."<br /><br />"Because... I said there's Tran. I didn't say that kid was Tran. That's his brother... Johnny. The geek in the back, the guy you probably didn't even notice. That's Tran. That's our man."<br /><br />Randall's eyes went from the flashy leader to the pack behind him. Four out of five were wannabes, duping the leader's gait, flashing some bling of their own, and kind of making asses of themselves. The fifth blended into the scenary. He had small glasses, a black sweatshirt, and jeans worn like they were meant to be worn.<br /><br />Randall, for the first time in a long time, was surprised.<br /><br />Cuba's eyes sparkled, "Yeah."C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-71898559952497306272008-06-28T08:09:00.001-07:002008-06-28T09:55:18.090-07:00Shark Chum LuAnne VI: Cold CubaWalking into Hart's Casino poker room in New Orleans, was a surreal experience for Randall. To the unknowing, the room looked like a cross-section of America. Conventioneers, tourists, businessmen, sometimes local <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">politicians</span>, and generally good folk sat elbow to elbow in usually cordial games. To Randall who knew by reputation or face the seedier players in town it was like he walked in with a special pair of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">goggles</span>. He'd instantly spot the partners running signs at one table, a team of three or four at another table, and the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">grifters</span>, sharps, lowlifes, "reformed" criminals, and degenerates spread throughout the room. Everybody else was blissfully unaware.<br /><br />On one table, there was a thug who Randall knew was responsible for killing at least two people sitting next to a doctor from Peoria. On another table a bad card sharp who dealt seconds in a bar game sat next to a large women tourist. Some of the cheats even wore <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Mardi</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Gras</span> beads like they were from out of town. And sprinkled through that lot were the local pros that somehow managed to make a living even with the minefield of deep-pockets chasing flush dreams on every hand, and crooked players attempting squeeze plays or whipsaws at every turn.<br /><br />As Randall surveyed the 28 table room, looking for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Taun</span> and getting a lay of the land, the smell of stale smoke overwhelmed him, and a raspy voice whispered into his ear, "Who you looking for Randall... the next you?"<br /><br />He turned and and immediately felt the hand of Cuba <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Perilloux</span> slide into his own. "Where you been stranger?" Cuba's eyes sparkled. Randall took in the cartoon of a man. A cigarette defying physics hung on his lower lip, a dirty painter's cap sat slightly askew on a nest of stringy brown hair, and out from his t-shirts and shorts sprouted four <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">un</span>-toned tubes of flesh that were his arms and legs. His grip indicated a surprising sinewy strength and Randall returned it.<br /><br />A necessary evil he thought and turned on the charm, "Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, how's life?"<br /><br />"I can't complain," he took a satisfied drag from his cigarette and blew into the faces of a group of tourists walking by. "Course it'd be better if this was still a smoking room. You know I missed a jackpot 6 months ago coming to the rail to smoke."<br /><br />"Smoking will kill you."<br /><br />"Nah, Randall, not me, as you always said something else or somebody else will first," Cuba never lost his gallows humor, and laughed at his own wit, "Right?"<br /><br />Randall, nodded and watched Stacy enter the poker room and put her name on the list and sit at the bar,"So How's ya <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">mamma</span>?"<br /><br />"She ain't too bad, look the kid ain't here yet, he will be. Give it a couple of hours. There's a soft game on table 8. Maybe we can trap those tourists in seats 8 and 9. Like old times."<br /><br />Randall squinted and studied the table. Running squeezes and passing signals with Cuba was not anything he was looking to get involved with at this time. Within seconds he was laughing to himself. The "tourists" in 8 and 9 were running their own traps working with seat 3. In fact, they were whipsawing the player in seat 1 as he watched. He grasped their system within seconds.<br /><br />They weren't using the most common system of placing chips on different spots on their cards to signal to their teammates the strength of their hands but they were using a variation. He could probably break the code fairly easily but he already knew it had to do with the position they placed their cards after looking at them and the number of chips they played with in their hands or riffled on the table after doing so.<br /><br />In one way Cuba was right, they would be a soft table because Randall would know their cards<br />every time, but he had other things on his mind. "Let's get a beer, Cuba," Randall pointed to the bar.<br /><br />"This game's so soft though," Cuba raised his eyebrows.<br /><br />"Let's get a beer."<br /><br />Randall led them to side of the semi-circle bar Stacy wasn't on and ordered quickly, Cuba getting a Bud Lite and Randall an <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Abita</span> Amber.<br /><br />Cuba, had tipped off Randall about <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Tuan</span>, he was kind of Randall's scouting service for Hart's casino. If <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Taun</span> played as well as Cuba promised, Cuba would get a nice little finder's fee. Randall had worked with Cuba for many years, and kind of outgrew the scamp, but still fed him small tasks like this one as he was a likable rogue.<br /><br />Cuba, tried to make his mark by dealing seconds and wasn't half bad, unlike Lazy though he lacked the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">grifter's</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">innate</span> sense of timing. His problem was juicing his customers too much. In fact, Randall found Cuba when the kid tried to cold-deck a room full of deep pockets in a game they played on the West Bank. Randall, of course, was setting his own trap with a more <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">subtle</span> game plan, when Cuba and a buddy slipped a cold deck into the game.<br /><br />Randall spotted it immediately. The first mistake was Cuba snapped his fingers at a girl and in a raspy voice said, "It's Bloody Mary time." It felt out of place, and Randall had long ago cultivated a feel for when things were out of step from what they should be. The girl brought out his bloody Mary drinks on a platter and placed the platter half over the table. Randall eyed Cuba as she did it and spotted the transition that was fairly smoothly done. Under the tray was a sleeve, that held a deck of cards and with Cuba's turn to deal he quickly slid the deck out that he was using for the new one. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Everybody's</span> eyes of course were on the waitress above the table and not Cuba's hands below it. The near spill of the Bloody Mary was an obvious and needed touch that even the players not eye-cornering her cleavage had to focus on. Except of course Randall.<br /><br />Randall's scam was slightly more sophisticated but he determined to see how Cuba's cold deck would play out.<br /><br />Cuba turned to the player next to him and ask for the cut. As the idiot had done all night he just tapped. A small smile started at the corner of Cuba's lips. Must of have known the player to his left was a tapper, and planned on his seat placement Randall thought. Not bad.<br /><br />They were playing seven card stud. When Randall got his hand he felt conflicted emotions. Wow, it's funny, he thought I was a target, kid has no clue. His top jack was matched by two more underneath. Though funny this kid had thought Randall a mark this was also troubling. This attempt looked like it was going to be a ham-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">fisted</span> scam. Randall looked on with dismay as the players showing an A and K, his two targets, couldn't contain their happiness.<br /><br />The cold deck, so called because, an older used deck is swapped out of play, for a deck that has been preset with cards in a certain arrangement got it's name because the cards from the new deck would literally be cold. The friction of playing a deck of cards heated them, you put a new deck into action and there was a notable absence of heat. As a result, getting <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">coolered</span> or cold decked also <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">referred</span> to having a huge hand lose to one of the few hands that could possibly be higher, because cheats would prearrange for these monsters to go to toe-to-toe in huge pots.<br /><br />Randall's, anger grew as the first round of betting played out. The targets showing an A or K weren't born <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">yesterday</span>, and if Cuba's cold-deck, which apparently was going to consist of three or four huge hands losing at showdown to his straight flush, or low quads, played out the targets would get wise. Once the game was suspicious of foul play Randall would never be able to run his play later in the night.<br /><br />He made a snap decision. When Cuba put the deck down, Randall elbowed the Bloody Mary right onto it. Cuba's eyes went wide with horror. "What the Fuck--man!" he screamed at Randall. Even better. Randall would have an excuse to take the kid outside and be alone with him.<br />The table leaped to help. Randall, made it worse as he "fumbled" the glass and dumped the full Bloody Mary all over the cold deck. No chance those cards would play.<br /><br />He acted weak, "I'm... I'm... Sorry."<br /><br />Cuba took the bait, "You fucking idiot!"<br /><br />The players needed a distraction from their own big hands, they were about to get fleeced with, because they were going to be angry too. And Randall determined that distraction would be him taking Cuba outside. Plus, they knew Randall didn't take to being called a fucking anything.<br />Randall turned from the cards throwing his three jacks into the muck and jabbed his forearm into Cuba's throat. All 170 pounds of Cuba backtracked gasping. With his other arm Randall kept him up and pushed him out the door.<br /><br />"Call me... Call ME a fucking idiot? You'll be lucky I don't kill you kid."<br /><br />The other players forgot about the hand and followed them out the door.<br /><br />Randall winked at his partner to let him know he hadn't completely flipped his lid.<br /><br />Cuba took two hard slaps to the face, they landed like punches. His testosterone melting under Randall's ruthless slaps, he slumped against the wall. Randall kneed him in the stomach taking his wind. Cuba grasped at air and fell to the pavement.<br /><br />Randall waved the onlookers away, he had done his damage.<br /><br />Then he knelt and whispered into Cuba's ear, "You pull that cold deck stunt again, they'll be fishing you out of Lake <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Pontchartrain</span>. Listen to me very closely you fucking leech. When we get back in there you tell that little waitress of yours to get lost with that tray. And you deal the rest of the night honest, and me and you will have a little conversation later. You do those things and I want need to lay another hand on you. You don't... and I'll drop you off the Causeway myself, tonight."<br /><br />Randall, let Cuba roll on the ground and went back inside to do damage control. Before the two targets could start whining about their trip Ks and Aces they had to give up, Randall commanded the spotlight. "Now, let's get this shit cleaned up. We're playing Hold 'Em now. And I'm so god-damned pissed I don't want to hear another peep from anybody for two hands."<br /><br />"We can't talk for two hands?" Randall's partner, thankfully, asked the obvious before someone else could.<br /><br />"That's right, you say another word you'll be lying in the gutter with that guy," Randall menacingly eyeballed his secret buddy.<br /><br />The other players didn't take to being talked to that way either. But they knew Randall well enough to give him a couple of hands to cool off. And Randall broke the silence quickly enough mid-way into the second hand with a long, tale that meandered over a couple hands, and soon the trip Aces and Kings were forgotten.<br /><br />At the end of the night, Randall took Cuba on a drive and he took the kid under his wing for a bit. The first lesson he taught the kid that night was never underestimate your marks or anybody for that matter. "Don't make it obvious going for a big score all at once," he had said. Sure enough the kid was going to beat four sets of quads with a straight flush. Fucking idiot Randall told him. He made sure the kid got the picture that Randall probably saved his life by kicking his ass. Problem was Cuba never could stop being sloppy or figure out how to conceal his angles. Randall had to cut him loose at one point, but kept him around for harmless jobs like this one. Some people never change and Cuba was one of them, he was a guy that could never see the big picture even now.<br /><br />Randall listened to him drone on about stealing big chips from his <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">table mates</span>. He'd risk getting banned from the casino, that he made his <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">livelihood,</span> in over stealing a couple of black-chips. Kid just didn't get it. He refrained from giving Cuba another lecture, that time had long since passed.<br />Then Cuba, very obviously jumped up from his seat, and pointed to a group of Vietnamese kids walking toward to the poker room, "That's <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Tuan</span>."<br /><br />"That's <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">subtle</span>," Randall thought rolling his eyes.C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-65400859935123143792008-06-23T12:48:00.001-07:002008-09-05T07:39:35.050-07:00Shark Chum LuAnne V: Troubled Water<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zeUcHpVPTsA/SMFEVTy5qWI/AAAAAAAAAIk/6bG2tmqn_Dg/s1600-h/playernPylons.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zeUcHpVPTsA/SMFEVTy5qWI/AAAAAAAAAIk/6bG2tmqn_Dg/s400/playernPylons.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5242546574117677410" /></a><br />As Stacy's rickety truck shook from the temporary bridging of the twin span riding into New Orleans, Randall was lost in thought. The ride had been one of long silences and trivial conversations. They were almost there but there was much to be resolved. Or would it just linger longer, Randall thought as he eyed her toned calves.<br /><br />A old Paul Young song came through on the radio. They didn't realize the lyrics until too late and the silent mood worsened. <em>"Every time you go away, you take a piece of me..."</em> Randall rolled his eyes as he turned to look out the window. This was going to be brutal. As it played on, he recognzied that Stacy couldn't and wouldn't change the channel because then it would be her acknowledging the sentiment.<br /><br />He contemplated turning the radio down and discussing Tuan or the plan, but he worried doing so would be him acknowledging it. So the song lingered, trapping them. He didn't like ballads and he liked this one even less. Syrupy, he thought.<br /><br />Stacy picked up the speed a little bit, as if she could fast forward the song, by passing cars.<br /><br />Finally, she spoke, "The new twin span is coming along. Should be an impressive bridge." A line of cranes and concrete poles in the water flittered by. They looked promising. They looked new. That was good to see.<br /><br />"Two years after Katrina," Randall replied, welcoming the interjection "and still not finished."<br /><br />"Bridges take a long time to build," Stacy muttered absently.<br /><br />"Yeah." <em>Ugh</em>, he thought to himself.<br /><br />The silence returned. They knew nothing more to add to the bridges conversation.<br /><br />The water lapped at the concrete stantions. As they rode it looked almost tranquil and serene with hardly a whitetop. The concrete stantions looked like giant spears coming out of the water and contrasted the still blue sky. Construction workers milled around atop each one. They didn't seem to be in a hurry. Randall searched for something to interrupt the song's lyrics. <br /><br />He was going to comment on a dark mercedes with tinted windows speeding past but the Paul Young tune mercifully abated. A temporary reprieve at best as the intro of "<em>She's Gone"</em> by Hall and Oates started. Randall, quickly turned off the radio, "I'm tired of the 80s. So... what's your approach?"<br /><br />"What's my approach? You want me to run it past you?" Stacy had a little venom to her tone as she passed another SUV.<br /><br />"Never hurts to practice."<br /><br />"Like run lines? I don't think so," She realigned her grip on the steering wheel, "I'm going to sit down next to this kid, flash my bankroll, flash my cleavage, and take an interest in all things Taun. I'll shower him with compliments, I'll let my eyes promise more than I'll deliver, and after a couple of hours of being <em>impressed</em> with his play, and doing some heavy flirting, I'll offer to bankroll him in a couple of the bigger buy-in circuit events coming in a couple of months with an extremely generous split for him. It's a piece of cake. We've done this a 1000 times."<br /><br />"And.."<br /><br />"And... Of course," she testily eyed him. "I'll get his number and then I'll call him and tell I want to put him in up in the private game next week. Kind of a trial period, then we'll get him in LuAnne DuBois' game and the plan will unfold."<br /><br />"You are a pro, this is just like the time..."<br /><br />"No, Randall, we aren't going to share war stories," she interupted. "We can avoid discussing "us" all you want but this is a one time thing. It's LuAnne DuBois and that's it. I'm not coming back in the fold. I'm doing you a... no, I'm doing myself a favor."<br /><br />"A favor? You need some new statues?"<br /><br />"No. College tuition ain't cheap. I got all I need. Statues...," she allowed herself a laugh, "But I want to keep it and have some left over for my son."<br /><br />"Look... about...,"<br /><br />"About? Wow, that's loaded. No. Randall, no," She spoke resolutely, "We'll discuss it... but we won't now." No we won't. He thought.<br /><br />"It," he thought to himself. He had bad car rides but never with something so heavy hanging over him. It was like going to a funeral of a guy who died only because he knew Randall. He had been to a few of those, but this was like riding with the corpse to the funeral.<br /><br />As they finished driving over the last of the twin-span he went back into internal thought. He pondered things that normally never filtered into his consciousness. He didn't think he had ever loved anybody. He was always focused on the current hustle and the next hustle, and living in a seedy business as his, he never trusted anybody until the money was doled out and he was a 100 miles out of their lives. Double crosses and after-the-money-split hold ups were like traffic accidents and your house. Most accidents are within 5 miles of where the person lives. Same with "third-party" hold-ups which are usually just friends of your partner, they usually take place 5 minutes into a drive-off.<br /><br />Stacy had never crossed him. He was never pulled over by masked men with shot-guns after his take. She had never taken up with a younger better Randall. He always thought he meet that guy after a job, under a ski-mask and a too itchy finger, but it never happened. Stacy could have. She was dangerous as they came. She pulled emotional strings with detachment but like a sociopath she could fake any emotion and convince you she cared about anything especially you. He always wondered if she was playing him from the start. If she truly cared about "It" or it was just emotional capital. Certainly, she got a bigger take because of her leverage.<br /><br />He wondered again, if he was right when he thought for a while she was as empty and bankrupt as he was inside. Yet... her love for her son seemed sincere. He hoped it was and recognized it was the first time in a long time, he hoped somebody else had a decent honest emotion just for them and not because it helped out some angle he was playing.<br /><br />He wondered if he was denying that there was always something tugging them both to each other. Most people were simply pawns to Randall, they had to be, he couldn't survive or do what he did if they weren't. It's a fools fault if you fool them, was his code, and everybody's a fool. Once you care about the fool, you're the fool.<br /><br />Had he made her this way? He had let her fall for him when she was young and simply eye-candy, and then he pushed her into situations like a pimp. Pimp, the word she called him in Reno. Then, he saw she was quite devious, her assets weren't solely physical and then when he continued to step on her heart, she became calloused. Of course, she fell for a target or a recruit every now and then, yet she never double-crossed Randall. He expected to her too, but she didn't. Not once.<br /><br />He didn't know why she was so loyal. And it was that loyality, touched at something in a space he long thought vacant. He prayed they wouldn't discuss "It."<br /><br /> As the city beckoned Randall spoke again, "I am going to test him though."<br /><br />"Test him?"<br /><br />"See how the pressure affects the kid. I'll be playing too. I'm going to be gunning for a win... of course but at the same time, I'm going ride that kid like he's Secretariat. The heat is coming."<br /><br />"The heat... Oh, jeez," Stacy smiled again and arched that eyebrow.C.S.noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882568905626732262.post-70121319839665320002008-06-22T21:18:00.000-07:002008-06-23T13:58:51.373-07:00Shark Chum LuAnne IV: Spear FishingLazy and Stacy studied the faces on the screen carefully. They were humoring Randall but were getting something out of it. They never doubted his methods because his results were always lucrative but he did take things a bit too far. This was a war-room and most of the faces were familar to them. They knew who they wanted to fleece and who they needed to fleece."<br /><br />"This is Tom 'Lead Foot' Givens, from Huntsville, former nightclub owner and sleaze peddler, now a poker player that plays the big club games in Atlanta and Birmingham, including some legit ones where the dealer isn't on his take, and plays them well," Randall flicked through slides keeping an eye on Lazy as he was keeping an eye on Stacy. "He'll be here. He'll have a lot of money. He's a principle target."<br /><br />"This feels an awful lot like school," Lazy drawled.<br /><br />Stacy laughed.<br /><br />Randall didn't mind the comment but did the reaction. She was bordering on flirting with Lazy. Randall knew why. He chose to ignore it for the moment. He waited.<br /><br />They comported themselves and Stacey broke the silence, "Lead Foot?"<br /><br />"He gives out multiple reasons for the nickname," Randall answered. "Sometimes he lies and says he used to drive stock cars. He'd probably tell you that. He didn't. Though his Granddaddy did, like most of the moonshiners. Lead Foot also plays fast, lives fast, and acts fast. Just about the opposite of the one and only Lazy."<br /><br />"No call for that..." Lazy feigned hurt.<br /><br />"What are the other lies?" Stacy asked.<br /><br />"One. His foot's a prosthetic and made out lead. War injury. He might tell that one to you, Lazy. It's not. He never served. He does have a club foot and once wore a protective boot. Never was lead though. Two, and this one has many variations but essentially boils down to giving people the lead foot when they cross him made famous by any number of incidents he'll make up. Anyway, he's a steady cautious player that usually only puts his money on the line when he has the nuts or an edge. He's not afraid to make sure he has the nuts or an edge either. Course when he's in a hand he's pushing on you hard. Giving you the lead foot."<br /><br />Randall went through some of the other targets but didn't invest too much time covering the material. The meeting was lacking the key player and that was the real object of this meeting deciding who that would be. After picking him they'd review their targets more carefully. He would be the player who would scoop the biggest pot, the player nobody would see coming and nobody would know was leaving. Randall needed an unknown. He almost wished Lazy wasn't his sleeper and his player, but reminded himself only Lazy could pull off his job.<br /><br />"Let's get to the candidates," he said. He toggled up another slide on the laptop projector, it was a Vietnamese kid who looked all of 15.<br /><br />"This is Tran Hung Dao. He's from New Orleans. He's gifted. He doesn't realize how gifted he is. Him finding a backer to get him into a game is plausible."<br /><br />"Can we trust him?" Stacy asked.<br /><br />"Can you gain his trust is the more important question," Randall left it there and waited. Stacy didn't show her ire, but he knew she didn't like recruiting and as she got older and her recruits stayed the same age it bothered her on a couple of different levels. He suspected her son's ascension into young adulthood was one of them. She was a pro though, she'd get it done.<br /><br />"Tran Hung Dao..." Lazy repeated. "I've dealt that kid. Tran Hung Dao. Interesting name. That's the name of a famous Vietnamese general who stopped Khubla Khan's armies."<br /><br />"How do you know these things?" Randall asked.<br /><br />"What is most interesting," continued Lazy, "besides probably creating hit and run military tactics, this guys' most successful victory involved what I guess you could call a con. In the battle of Bach Dan River General Tran's men in small boats baited and lured the larger Mongol vessels to follow them in successive skirmishes until they got to a shallow part of the river. As the Mongols prepared to overwhelm them, the tide went out and their boats were crippled as they sank and ran aground because of the spears Tran's army had placed in the riverbed. So the kid is named after a con-man. Oh, he was also a poet and unoriginal as the same ploy was used against the Chinese two centuries previous. Still, a con's a con."<br /><br />"Again, how do you know these thing?" Randall asked.<br /><br />"I read A... lot. Who's the other candidate?"<br /><br />"Will we get another lecture with him too?" Stacy teased Lazy. He smiled in return. Stacy accepted it with one of her own barely glancing at Randall through the side of her eye.<br /><br />"Depends on the name. Patton... yes... Rommel... certainly..."<br /><br />"How about Beau Broussard?" Randall interrupted as Tran's slide came off the screen.<br /><br />"Beausoleil? Because yes, I got quite a bit on a Beausoleil Brouss..."<br /><br />"It's just Beau," Randall clicked the slide to show a rail-thin LSU student, "He's better known as BB2Cartman on Fulltilt, as BBCuNRaZU on Stars and BBustnDOnkeys on absolute account. I didn't think he was real, and maybe an online scammer because he can mulit-table 25 hands at the same time but he is real. He's lethal. Only problem is he's never played live."<br /><br />"Do I get to woo this kid too?" Stacy arched an eyebrow, angrily but seductively. She was channeling a black and white film star.<br /><br />"No. That's another problem. I think he's gay. He's been rumored to have a relationship with an Italian pro, the flamboyant one."<br /><br />"Aren't all the Italian pros flamboyant?" Lazy asked. "It's in their DNA. Like Alberta Tomba."<br /><br />"Silly," Stacy whispered, "Tomba wasn't gay. But... how may Italian pros are there, I can think of two the pirate looking dude and that scarf wearing kid, though I'd have to call them both flamboyant. Is one of them..."<br /><br />"His boyfriend is irrelevant because he no longer has one... which makes things easier... however, his sexuality is relavant because that presents a bit of a problem. We'd need a different tactic with him then just Stacy's considerable charms."<br /><br />"What's wrong with the Asian, again?" Lazy asked.<br /><br />"He's got a leak."<br /><br />"What a coke habit? Everybody's got a leak," Lazy rolled his eyes.<br /><br />"He's got a conscience."C.S.noreply@blogger.com0